


Coming Up For Air

by crumpetz



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brain Damage, Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Important, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Lance is Good at Feelings, My favorite Ship is FriendSHIP (oh my god...), Near Drowning, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Swearing, Team as Family, VLDgen, Vomiting, some ppl are scared so i'm gonna say right here that this has a happy ending it really does, struggles to do with eating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-03-03 13:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13342524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumpetz/pseuds/crumpetz
Summary: "Sometimes Keith wondered if with every new person he let past his walls, maybe the walls got weaker, came down quicker, more eager to let people in. Maybe Shiro had been the beginning of the end on that front. It was all so freaking scary."The team must recover in more ways than one after a mission gone wrong leaves Keith with brain damage.AKA, the fic where Lance and Keith (accidentally?) become bff's.





	1. Something to Lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! So, I started writing this story right after season three came out, and the reason I'm only posting it now is honestly NERVES. Pushing past that, though. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> This fic is canon-compliant up to season 4. The divergence will be clear as you read it, but to be up front, in this fic, Keith decided to stay with Voltron instead of leaving with the Blade of Marmora (before the Black Lion accepted Shiro again). 
> 
> IMPORTANT: Please mind the tags! This story is gonna have plenty of comfort to balance the hurt, but it will get intense, guys. I'll update tags/trigger warnings as I go if needed. Please let me know if there's something that would be helpful for me to add. I'm kind of new at using tags and appreciate the help!

_"Voltron’s compositional strength far exceeds anything else in this universe." - Princess Allura, s3e4_

* * *

 

“Oh, maaaan,” Lance groaned, popping his helmet off his flushed face. His voice was even winier than its usual pitch, courtesy of the sinus thing he’d been putting up with for about a week now. It had started off as allergies. “Pidge, Pidgey, my favorite. Lend me one of those tissues you got squirreled away, would you? I’m leaking…everywhere, man.”

“Dear crap, _Lance_ ,” said Pidge, her caramel eyes rolling to the side. “Hold on.”

Keith watched the interaction from the corner of his vision. Lance wasn’t exaggerating. There wasn’t a hole on the guy’s face that wasn’t dripping _something_. His eyes were tearful and bloodshot around blue irises, his turned-up nose snotty and raw from constant rubbing, drool on his chin from mouth-breathing. It was both pitiful and a little funny. 

Allura hid a glittering smile with her hand, meeting Keith’s eyes with muted amusement. Keith shrugged. None of this was dangerous or anything. Just annoying. And Keith guessed that was why Allura wasn’t trying harder to hide the fact that human allergies were actually hilarious to her. 

Pidge had been afflicted with the same drill days ago but had managed to clear hers up with medicine. Lance, though, didn’t like the medicine. Made him tired, he’d said. So, he’d been _toughing it out_. Whatever that meant.

The five of them were headed to the bridge together—the five of them being Keith, Pidge, Lance, Hunk, and Allura. Voltron’s new normal. 

Shiro hadn’t tried getting Black to accept him again since the first couple failed attempts and no one was pressing it right now. 

Keith _definitely_ wasn’t pressing it. Not anymore.

Shiro needed space when it came to the whole Paladin thing; Keith had learned the hard way. They were managing with him supporting them from the castle and tagging along when necessary on certain missions. Silently, though, Keith’s skin crawled with every moment of it. Nothing felt quite normal yet.

“Hey,” Lance said, bumping his shoulder against Keith’s as they walked, effectively breaking Keith out of his thoughts. “Who spit in _your_ coffee? You look like you want to kill something.”

Keith blinked. “What?”

“I think that’s just Keith’s face,” Hunk said with a smile, resting a large hand on Lance’s opposite shoulder. 

Pidge nodded from just ahead of them, not even bothering to look back as she said, “Classic case RBF.”

“RBF?” Allura said from behind. “I’m not familiar with that term.”

“I do _not_ have…whatever that is,” Keith said. “I’m just not a fan of politics.”

Lance sniffled against a wadded tissue. “Oh, you’re talking about the mission.”

“If it can be called a mission,” Keith mumbled.

“Of course it was a mission,” Allura said, not exactly defensive, but a little forced in her enthusiasm. “We may not have been fighting Galra in the literal sense these past few days, but the formation of alliances against Zarkon’s Empire are a blow in their own right. Diplomatic victory is still a victory, Keith, and you all did very well in securing it. You should be proud.”

Keith nodded without really looking at her, uninterested in trying to argue. He knew there was some level of truth to her words. Didn’t mean he liked it, though. Forming Voltron like a glorified parade float and calling it a mission would never stop feeling stupid.

Lance bumped him with his shoulder again, giving him a smug look, and whispered, “Mission-snob.”

Keith bumped him back, more like a shove, and whispered, “Shut up.” 

Lance loved diplomatic missions. Schmoozing and being schmoozed were talents of his. Keith didn’t want to hear it from someone who found this easy when it was actually. _Really._ _Hard_?

Okay, Keith didn’t want to hear it from anyone, honestly.

“Uh oh,” Lance muttered, not to Keith. More like to himself. He stopped in his tracks and everyone froze. 

Lance blinked rapidly, head tilting back in that way that they’d all learned by now indicated an impending sneeze-attack, and everyone stepped back from him, even Hunk, poor Pidge rushing to pull handfuls of crumpled tissues from a slot in her armor and throwing them at him.

Lance sneezed with his whole body, doubling over, then launching back up as if the blast of the sneeze itself had been enough to propel him. He sniffled powerfully, rubbing his nose with a ball of tissues and then again with the back of his gloved hand.

“Oh,” Lance said, “my god.”

Keith bit his lip. Allura was already leaning against the wall laughing into her hand. Hunk was patting Lance’s shoulder again, straining to stifle his own chuckles. Pidge rolled her eyes, grumbling about wasting her limited supply of lotion enriched tissues on someone too stubborn to take his dang antihistamines. Keith didn’t miss the little smirk that made it onto her face, though. Lance was, admittedly, a funny sneezer. Lance proceeded to pout at all of them.

“Oh, yeah, laugh at my pain,” he said stuffily. But he grinned. “Very nice, guys.”

Coran’s voice crackled onto the castle speakers. “Everything alright, paladins? Can’t help but notice it’s taking you a while.”

Allura straightened immediately, saying, “Sorry, Coran. We’re on our way. Lance was…sneezing again.” She covered her mouth, hiding another smile.

“Ah, yes,” Coran said excitedly over the speakers. “The nasal slipperies! Take your time.”

Laughter again, all around. Before Coran cut off, Keith could swear he heard Shiro and Pidge’s brother snickering through the speakers. 

Even though they’d tried explaining to the Alteans that runny noses and the slipperies were not the same thing, neither had really seemed to be able to comprehend it. They had nothing else to compare it to. 

Alteans, it turned out, did not experience allergies or anything else remotely similar, their immune systems evolved past susceptibility to environmental irritants like pollen and mold. Slipperies was their only point of reference when it came to mass quantities of mucus getting everywhere. And the idea of someone as young as Lance getting the slipperies, as well as the idea of the slipperies being localized to just his nose, was apparently ridiculously odd to the point of being outright hilarious to them. They’d been unable to keep from laughing when it had happened to Pidge, too.

“I apologize, Lance,” Allura said, her hand kept loosely over her mouth which still twitched with a smile.“I don’t mean to be insensitive.”

“Yeah, yeah. No worries, Princess.” Lance kept walking, tissues balled up under his nose. Not for the first time that week, Keith heard him mutter, “Nasal slipperies. Oh my god.”

* * *

After dinner, Keith spent some time on the training deck with Shiro, which was good.

They needed it. The normal.

It wasn’t like Shiro was no longer involved in Voltron’s missions, but since he’d had to step back from piloting Black, the amount of time he and Keith actually spent with each other had, naturally, decreased. Keith couldn’t help but feel a little awkward, too, during the times they did spend together when Voltron was the focus, because stepping back from piloting hadn’t exactly been Shiro’s choice. 

Catching up on exercise together, though, that was fine. That was safe. And even though Lance often pointed out that it was crazy, it was how both Keith and Shiro relaxed. Something good that the universe hadn’t been able to steal.

“Yikes, Keith,” Shiro said, rolling his shoulders back as he stepped away from the crumpled gladiator on the floor. “Remind me not to piss _you_ off after PR missions.”

Keith smiled, mouth a little open, a little out of breath. The gladiator disappeared into the floor and the black bayard reverted in Keith’s hand. Yeah, okay, so, he’d gone a little overboard. Shiro had no room to judge. Shiro didn’t like politics either. 

“I’ve missed the exercise,” Keith said, stretching an elbow behind his head to work the shoulder a little. Those muscles hadn’t been quite the same since his trial with the Blade of Marmora. “I just spent three days doing basically nothing.”

Keith came around and plunked down on the floor, hands hanging loosely around his bent knees, content to stop there as Shiro seemed to be. Shiro tossed him a water pouch and sat on the floor beside him, metal elbow resting on his knee, other hand holding his own water to his mouth as he drew in deep gulps. Shiro lowered the pouch after draining it a good halfway and let out a contented sigh.

“Well,” Shiro said, meeting Keith’s eyes. “Either you’re getting faster or I’m getting old. Maybe both.”

Keith frowned. “You have to be at least thirty before you call yourself old.”

“Thirty?” Shiro raised a brow. “So, that’s your idea of old? Here I was just kidding around.”

Keith rolled his eyes at him.

“I’m serious about the gladiator, though.” Shiro nodded to the empty patch of floor where the training robot had been defeated moments earlier. “I barely touched it that time.”

“Oh.” Keith hunched a little, gaze shifting away. “Got impatient. I guess.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, like that much was obvious. And Shiro didn’t sound disappointed or even competitive. He sounded actually kind of pleased.

Keith sucked down some water. It was lukewarm from sitting out, but it felt good just the same.

“I’m proud of you,” Shiro said.

“About the gladiator?” Keith looked up at him.

“About everything.”

Shiro was smiling at him in that way with his mouth closed and eyes crinkling; the softest, warmest thing in the universe. It always made Keith feel a little more whole being under that smile. 

It also shot adrenaline through his veins, though. An uncomfortable undercurrent. It was as if his body was anticipating the loss of that goodness every time he re-encountered it. Quiznak. Keith couldn’t do anything normal. Not even feelings. Maybe especially not those.

It brought his mind back to a conversation he’d had with Lance _months_ ago, a while after Shiro’s return, back when Keith had been caught up in Marmora training and slowly distancing himself from the team.

Lance and Keith had just happened to be washing up before bed at the same time, on one of the increasingly rare evenings Keith even spent at the Castle anymore, side by side at their respective sinks in the communal bathrooms, and Lance had just started talking about random stuff while Keith brushed his teeth, because Lance was like that, a talker, and, somehow, things had gotten deep all the sudden. 

Like, one minute Lance was rambling on about the importance of reapplying sunscreen during beach trips and then the next, Keith was dumping his soul out. Dumping his soul out about stuff that’d been bothering him, bothering him _so much,_ but it was stuff he’d locked away, decided _he’d_ need to handle, stuff he’d sworn to himself he would never bring up to the team. 

But he was now. Oh, god, he was. He was bringing it up. All of it.

And Lance had just stood there, weird blue lotion half-coating his brown face, eyes a little wide, but, aside that, his expression remaining oddly calm and blank.

And Keith had realized about partway through that this was weird, wasn’t it? He was being weird. Too much, too soon. Sure, they were on better terms. They’d had some serious conversations; some small ones. They were friends…ish? They were friends, right? Maybe? 

But they weren’t actually _close_ , really. Not like Lance was with Hunk, or even with Pidge. Not like Keith was with Shiro; definitely not that. And Keith had been cold lately, on _purpose_. They _definitely_ weren’t at the point now where it was okay for Keith to just…talk about this stuff. Where Keith could even feel _remotely_ comfortable with it now that his thinking had caught up with his doing.

But Keith had already started and there was no undoing it, so he’d just pushed forward like he did with everything and finished what he had started and glared through the whole end of it, too, just daring Lance to do what he already knew Lance was going to do, which was find this weird, which Keith already knew full well it was.

Keith had finished. Lance had shaken his head and said, without even leaving room for an awkward silence or anything, “No, I got you. But Shiro’s not like that, you know? And even if he was, it’s not just Shiro anymore, dude. I mean, it doesn’t have to be. Worst case scenario, you’ve still got us.”  

The words had been said casually, almost like Lance was under the impression he was stating the obvious here. Keith had been so overwhelmed by the response, however, he’d felt frozen in place, pins and needles in his fingertips. 

Was he…relieved? Yes. Oh my god! He was so freaking relieved, his head was spinning.

What in the…?

A moment later, when he’d gotten a handle on himself again, Keith had nodded, unable to really form words. But he wasn’t usually a huge talker anyway, so that was normal, probably. God. 

And he’d just finished up brushing his teeth in silence while Lance went off on some new tangent like the whole thing hadn’t even happened and at some point Hunk came in and Lance was talking to him instead and so when Keith was done with his teeth, he’d just walked away and he’d sat in his room for a while, just breathing. And all the next day, Keith’s stomach had twisted with an odd kind of guilt every time he met Shiro’s eyes, because Keith had realized Lance was right. It wasn’t just Shiro anymore. Keith had other people besides just Shiro. And, with things still so _not normal_ , that had felt like betrayal somehow.

“Hey,” Shiro said. “Everything okay?”

Keith blinked. He met Shiro’s gaze and nodded. “Just thinking.”

“Mm. Anything important?”

“Not really,” Keith muttered.

They were quiet for a moment, Keith staring at the bends in his knees where the fabric of his pants wrinkled, the sound of Shiro’s prosthetic fingertips tap-tap-tapping against the floor in sequence. 

“I mean it,” Shiro said, breaking the silence with a voice soft and sober. “About being proud of you. I know you’re not a fan of some of these missions, particularly when things start getting…mm, more focused on keeping up appearances, I guess. But you get through it. You do your job. You give it your best, even when you don’t like all the details. That shows a lot of maturity.” Keith heard the smile grow in Shiro’s voice. “And if you have to come home and battle it out with the gladiator afterward to get it out of your system, then that’s fine too. Better to get impatient with that than at your teammates.”

“Mm.” Keith dragged a hand over his face, peering up at Shiro through his fingers. “No kidding. Lance has _allergies_ , Shiro.”

Shiro let out a short laugh in spite of himself. He leaned back on his hands. “Yeah, so I’ve seen. And heard.” Shiro shivered slightly. “And _felt_ , on occasion.”

“He sneezed in Hunk’s eye during one of the parades yesterday.” 

Shiro’s eyes stretched wide. Then he was laughing, really laughing. Keith shook his head and launched into a deeper explanation. 

“No, Shiro. You don’t understand. He seriously sneezed in Hunk’s eye. Didn’t even realize he’d done it, either. Just kept sneezing. And Hunk!” Keith’s hands had started moving as he talked, which happened sometimes, because even when he was using his words, words still weren’t e _nough_. “Guy just took it, Shiro! Wiped his face off and pretended it never happened. I saw the whole thing. I don’t think Hunk ever told him. Big guy thinks he’s the only one who knows it happened and he’s taking the secret to his grave or something. He’s, like, trying to be a good friend, maybe? But, yeah, Lance definitely sneezed, like, directly into Hunk’s open eye. It was straight out of Jurassic Park, Shiro. Oh my god.”

“Wait.” Shiro caught his breath. “Jurassic Park? With the dinosaurs? Like, you mean the little one? That spits the poison into that one guy’s face and…?”

“YES!” Keith said. “Oh my _gosh_. It was exactly like that. Oh my god, Shiro. The one with the, like, the frill around it’s head? It’s like…if Lance was a dinosaur…”

“Oh my god,” Shiro said, stilling like this was some grave realization. “You’re right.”

“But minus the poison,” Keith said. “He’d have the frill, but he wouldn’t spit poison at people. He’d just, you know, accidentally sneeze in their eyes and not realize he’d done it.”

Shiro continued to quake with residual laughter for a minute, finally letting out an easy sigh, shoulders slumping back. “Okay, but if _I_ was a dinosaur…”

“Stegosaurus,” Keith said without even having to think about it.

Shiro raised a brow at him.

“Herbivore,” Keith said simply. “Won’t attack unless you give it a good reason to. Then it’s all spikes.”

Shiro cocked his head, seeming to consider. He nodded slowly, brow creasing, and said, “Pidge is definitely a pterodactyl and I have no idea why.”

“Coran’s a T-Rex,” Keith said, completely serious. “But he feels conflicted about it and tries not to eat dinosaurs he knows.”

* * *

Lance was sitting on a couch across from Keith while Keith read and waited for his hair to dry. Lance’s hair was wet too, freshly showered to get the dander out before he tried to sleep, or that’s what he’d said. Keith didn’t really get it. Like Allura and Coran, he’d never really experienced allergies firsthand. He wondered, vaguely, if maybe that wasn’t normal. _Human_ normal, at least.

Lance sipped on some mug of something that steamed, something probably like tea. He kept clearing his throat between sips. Sniffle, sip, clear throat, repeat. His shower had definitely done something to wash the effects of the day’s allergies away, but Lance still looked like a red-nosed, watery-eyed pity-case. Pidge had been a sad sight herself, but she hadn’t let it get _this_ bad.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” Lance grumbled over his mug and Keith realized he’d been staring over the top of his book for a while now.

“Seriously?” Keith said, genuinely curious. “You’re this sick…because of a plant?”

“I think it’s cedar,” Lance said, looking sorrowful. “Or…space-cedar? Something like that. Ugh.”

“Are the meds really that bad, though?” Keith asked, setting his book down on his lap.

“ _Yeeees_ ,” Lance said with force.

“Worse than this?” Keith gestured to Lance’s hunched form.

Lance scowled. “Mm.”

“Pidge seems _fine_ to me.”

“Pidge might have super powers.”

“Dude,” Keith said. “You look really, really bad.”

“Rude.” Lance probably would’ve folded his arms if he hadn’t been holding the mug of tea. Instead, he settled for taking a very pouty sip prefaced by a loud sniffle. He came up for air and cleared his throat, right on schedule. He looked to the side, contemplative. “Man, this really is terrible.”

“Just take the meds.”

“I’ve come so far!”

“For the team?”

Lance stiffened at that. He swallowed. He sniffled. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, fine. Okay. Maybe once before bed won’t hurt.” He met Keith’s eyes. “If anyone asks, it was my idea, though.”

“Yeah, like you’d actually listen to me if you didn’t want to do it anyway.”

Lance’s smile spread in that lazy, lopsided way of his. He stood from the couch, mug still clutched in his hands, and walked away, probably to wherever Pidge was at to bum some of her human-specific allergy medicine off her. On his way out of the room, Lance mumbled a simple, “G’night,” and Keith grabbed his book again, stiffening against the sensation of adrenaline shooting through his veins.

That had been happening more and more lately, that brief jolt of panic that used to be reserved only for Shiro, really. The realization that he had something good and the instantaneous fear of losing it. 

It happened when Pidge adjusted her glasses right before saying something sarcastic now, or when Coran spouted obscure facts Keith didn’t understand, or when Hunk belly laughed, or when Allura folded her hands under her chin when she got really, really excited. 

He couldn’t just enjoy having people to care about. It had to terrify him, too. Every good thing he gained was another good thing he could lose and that was just the story of his life. 

Even Pidge’s brother, Matt, had joined the club of people Keith was scared to lose, and Keith hadn’t even known the guy that long. Sometimes Keith wondered if with every new person he let past his walls, maybe the walls got weaker, came down quicker, more eager to let people in. Maybe Shiro had been the beginning of the end on that front. It was all so freaking scary.

It was okay, though. 

Keith was okay. 

This was…

Worth it.

* * *

Keith was on his way to his room, book in hand, ready to turn in, when everyone was summoned right back to the bridge. Lance showed up in his pajamas, nose and eyes still red but maybe a little less sniffly and expression about ninety times more exhausted-slash-murderous. So, apparently he’d taken the medicine.

They had received urgent intel from rebel forces, a matter Coran had asked them to monitor for some time. It had to do with a certain system of several planets rich in organic resources unavailable anywhere else; like an endangered species but with entire planets rather than just one creature. The Galra had shown little interest in exploiting these particular planets so far; the resources weren’t useful enough to them to bother with and there weren’t any life forms advanced enough to need conquering, it seemed. No action had been necessary on Voltron’s part. 

The latest intel from their rebel allies said otherwise, though. A small Galra base situated on one of these planets had recently grown into a much bigger Galra base and the rebels reported an adverse effect on that planet’s environment. Shutting down this base hadn’t been a priority before, but Coran said that this new information was enough to make it a priority now. 

Keith couldn’t help but feel a little conflicted about that perspective. The way it had been explained to him, there were four of these planets and only one of them was _kind of_ in danger. Not to mention, out of all four of them, including the one they were about to risk their lives to save, not a single one of them held a speck of sentient life. Just…really rare plants? 

But Keith could also admit that sometimes his personal perspective wasn’t really as broad as it could be, and Coran was probably right in his own way, the same way Allura was right about diplomatic missions still being missions. At least this mission wasn’t going to require a parade.

And that was how the evening ended. The matter was pressing, but not so pressing that it required _immediate_ action. The paladins would be allowed to get a good night’s sleep. They’d go put an end to the offending Galra base first thing in the morning.

* * *

Well, that was how the evening should’ve ended.

Keith’s body had other plans. The new mission had him wired, too wired to sleep. Too wired to even lay still and _try_ to sleep, really. He tossed and turned, trying to feel tired, knowing he would later if he didn’t sleep soon, but it was useless. He’d never been great at sleep to begin with. Hours passed in dark quiet, the only sounds the shifting of his sheets when he tossed and his occasional sighs of frustration when he still didn’t sleep.

He was wide awake when someone sneezed outside his door. Only one person’s sneeze sounded quite like that.

Keith made a split decision and kicked out of his bed, feet finding the floor and making it to his door. He triggered it to open and was greeted with an empty hall. Keith looked to the left, then the right, and there he was, pacing the halls with hands stuffed deep in his blue robe pockets, shoulders slumped forward, steps heavy with exhaustion. 

Keith leaned against his doorframe and chuckled. 

Lance straightened up like an arrow at Keith’s voice, whole body jolting with obvious surprise. He spun around to face Keith, eyes huge. His hands covered his heart.

“Oh. My. _God_ , Keith!” Lance hissed. He stalked over, fixing Keith with a sharp glare. “Are you trying to _kill_ me?”

Keith folded his arms loosely. “Sorry. Didn’t think it’d be that easy to catch Voltron’s sharp shooter off guard. My bad.”

Lance’s glare sunk deeper into his face. He spread his arms wide in emphasis. “I’m on _Benadryl_!” As if that explained it all. His arms flopped down, his features losing their venom. He leaned back against the wall across from Keith, wiping his nose sloppily with the back of his sleeve. “S’your fault, you know? You told me t’do it.”

“You told me to pretend it was _your_ idea.”

Lance grunted. “Just saying. It’s a good thing the Galra base can wait until tomorrow, because,” Lance waved a hand up and down at himself, “this is not happening tonight.”

“Then sleep, dude.” Keith let out a quiet half-laugh, because that was so obvious. Lance really was out of it. But Lance’s gaze cleared just a bit at the word sleep, like the word was dangerous, and Keith paused. “Unless…you’ve got a reason not to?”

Lance stared at him for a moment, wordless, seeming uninterested in giving any kind of reply. Then he seemed to lean a little heavier against the wall, eyes drifting to the side, a sigh leaving him. Lance frowned.

“Mm. Yeah. I guess,” Lance said, shrugging a shoulder. “I slept a few hours, I think.”

Keith blinked. “…Okay?”

Lance’s gaze darted back to him, defensive. “It wasn’t nightmares.”

“Um,” Keith said. “That’s good, I guess.”

“It’s just a lot, okay?” Lance said. “To think about, I mean. This mission tomorrow. It’s…a lot.”

“It’s pretty simple,” Keith said. “Shiro can go over it with you again in the morning if you want. I know you were pretty out of it when they were explaining things earlier.”

“It’s not that,” Lance said. “I heard it the first time. It’s not like I’m worried.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Uh. Okay.” Crap, this really wasn’t Keith’s strength. He took a steadying breath, letting it out slow through his mouth. He tried again. “But…something _is_ bothering you. Right?”

Lance smiled, but it had an edge. He let out a shaky breath, smile fading gradually as he did, expression becoming carefully blank. “It’s nothing. I trust Coran and Allura. Just makes me uneasy. Or… _conflicted_ , I guess. I’m willing to shoot and stuff, but usually it’s to save other people, you know? I’m not used to doing it to save…plants.”

For a moment, all Keith could do was gape. Lance’s brow wrinkled as the silence stretched.

“Not that I don’t plan on following orders or anything,” Lance said suddenly, with urgency.

“No, no, I got you,” Keith said. “Yeah, no. Sorry. I was just…actually, I was just thinking the same thing. I haven’t been able to sleep at all.”

Lance paused at that. “Seriously?”

“Um, yes?”

“Huh. Would’ve thought this kind of mission was right up your alley. You love taking down bases.”

“Yeah, when it’s worth it. This is a big risk for a bunch of uninhabited planets. But, you know, we do parades too now, apparently, so not everything has to make sense, I guess.”

Lance cracked a smile at that. “God. You really are a mission snob.”

“So are you, apparently.”

“No,” Lance said, still smiling, but an eery air of seriousness to his tone. “Making sense of it isn’t a problem for me. I just…think killing people for no good reason is something bad guys do. That’s all.”

And just like that, the moment lost its humor completely. Willing to shoot. That’s what he’d meant.

“Oh,” Keith said.

Lance held the smile. His eyes were impossibly sad. “I trust Coran and Allura,” he said. “I know there’s a big picture here and that’s important. Just feels wrong. That’s all.”

“It’s not like you’re going there to kill Galra,” Keith said.

“It’ll probably happen, though,” Lance said. “A base that big.”

“Yeah, but…”

“It’s okay,” Lance said, a shoulder shrugging up. “It’s the job. It keeps you guys safe. Protects the universe. I can do it.”

Keith hugged his arms a little tighter. Something ached inside of him, deep in the pit of his stomach, worse than the usual adrenaline. Worse than the usual fear that came from caring. It was the feeling he got when he used to catch Pidge watching and rewatching the security video of her brother escaping a Galra prison or when Shiro would close himself up in his room because the flashbacks had been pretty bad lately and he just needed time.

It was worse with Lance, somehow, though. Or, maybe not worse; just harder to deal with. The achy feeling. Keith wasn’t really sure why. Maybe it was because, out of everyone, Lance hadn’t been one to show much vulnerability to him at first, so the rare moments it happened, it felt really significant. 

Maybe it was because ever since they defeated Zarkon and Shiro disappeared _again_ , Lance had stopped being the goofy one and started being the one who seemed to hold things together. Keith had become the leader, sure, but he didn’t kid himself. Lance was the talent behind the teamwork. Without him, Keith wouldn’t be leading. Without him, Keith probably wouldn’t have had a team still willing to follow at this point. Past experience dictated as much. 

And since Shiro had come back, that hadn’t exactly changed. Lance still held things together. Looking back, Keith realized he probably always had, in a way. But now it was so much more pronounced, so blindingly obvious, and so if Lance was conflicted about this upcoming mission, if Lance was _hurting_ because of it…

Lance sneezed.

Keith shook off his thoughts.

“Dude,” Keith said. “You took the medicine, right?”

Lance looked up from wiping his nose on the crook of his arm. “This _is_ me on medicine.”

“God.”

“I know.”

Lance sniffled. They were silent for a while. Keith bit back a yawn. Lance actually did yawn, then looked around, leaning away from the wall, opening his mouth, probably to say goodnight.

“You’re a good shot,” Keith said. 

Lance met his eyes, tired, but curious all the same.

Keith swallowed. “Maybe you could, like, focus on disarming them tomorrow instead of shooting to kill?” Keith uncrossed his arms, holding his hands out in front of him palms-up. “Go for their guns and their kneecaps. I’ll work with you from the ground. We can cuff them and get them off the premises or something before we destroy the base. The base is the real mission, right? So, it’s okay if we all live to fight another day. Even the enemy.”

Lance stood there, expression frozen on his face, eyes unblinking. Silence. Then, Lance broke it with a quiet sniffle, bringing his sleeve up to rub his nose again. When he brought his sleeve down, he was smiling, and this time it wasn’t sad or with an edge. Maybe just a little tired.

“Thanks, Keith,” Lance said. “It’s cool that…well, _you_ said that, I guess. We should go to bed.”

“Um.” Keith wasn’t really sure what Lance meant, but at least he seemed happy now. Keith wasn’t going to question that. “Sure.”

Lance’s smile broadened. He turned down the hall toward his room, waving a hand as he passed Keith. “G’night,” he said.

Keith nodded. He ducked back into his room. He could hear the sound of Lance’s door sliding open. Keith ducked his head out before Lance made it inside.

“Hey, Lance?” Keith said.

Lance paused in his doorway, leaning his head back to look at Keith with eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”

“Good luck with your nasal slipperies,” Keith said.

Lance’s expression dropped. Keith ducked into his room and shut the door quickly, hearing Lance groan, “Oh my god,” one last time before the door slid into place.

* * *

Morning came and Keith hadn’t gotten enough sleep, but that was fine. Keith did fine on not enough sleep. Lance was looking better, at least. His nose still looked raw from rubbing it for a week straight, but he wasn’t actively leaking or sneezing anymore. The medicine must’ve actually helped.

Everyone was heading to their lions and Keith caught Lance’s eye while the others were preoccupied going over details one last time.

“So, we good?” Keith said.

“Yeah, of course,” Lance said with a smile. He spun his helmet between his hands. “And, hey, forget what we talked about last night, okay? The whole going for their guns and their knee caps and cuffing them afterward thing? I think we better just do things like normal. No last minute change in plans.”

Keith could feel his brow scrunching. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. I appreciate the thought, but the bottom line is that if we make zero deaths for the other side our priority, it puts that much more risk on our side, and I don’t want that. The risk for us is already pretty big.”

“Okay…” Keith watched Lance for any sign of underlying insincerity, but so far he looked perfectly resolute with his decision. Keith nodded and said again, “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Positive,” Lance said. “I still don’t like it, but I’m good with it, if that makes sense.”

Keith shrugged. “Sure.”

Lance let out a sigh that seemed kind of relieved, his shoulders relaxing. “Yeah,” he said, and gave Keith a meaningful look. “But…thanks for offering.” 

“Oh. Um. No problem?”

“I mean it, Keith.” Lance grinned, maybe a little smug. “Come on. Going out of your way so the _enemy_ can live to fight another day? That’s, like, the least _Keith_ thing I’ve ever heard.”

Keith rolled his eyes to the side. “Shut up.”

Lance’s grin only widened. “You were _worried_.”

“You said you were _conflicted_! It could’ve thrown off the mission!”

“Uh huh, uh huh,” Lance sidled up next to him and nudged him in the side with a pointy elbow. “Whatever you say. Softie.”

“How’s your nasal slipperies?”

“Alright, you know what…?”

Pidge interrupted them, her voice scathing in the way it was only in the very early morning after probably a late night, her patience at its minimum. “Guys. Lions. _Now_.”

Lance headed in the direction of Red, which still stung Keith just a little in a deep, underneath way, the same Keith was sure it stung for Lance that Allura went in the direction of Blue and for Shiro that Keith went for Black. Well, for Shiro it was probably worse. Keith wasn’t sure what Shiro was feeling from his new place up on the bridge with Coran.

Before Lance passed from view, he looked one last time over his shoulder to make a face at Keith, silent retaliation for the nasal slipperies comment, probably. It was ridiculous; nose wrinkled up, mouth open and grimacing, tongue stuck out the side, eyes dramatically wide. Keith couldn’t help a laugh. And then Lance was turning around again, and all Keith saw was the back of his brunette head.

* * *

The mission was a success, technically speaking.  The mission was to shut down the Galra base on the third endangered planet in the system, and that definitely happened. It just…happened differently than planned. 

Much less environmentally friendly than they’d planned.

The Galra base was bigger than any base Keith had seen so far, situated across an expanse of snow-covered mountains that reminded Keith of scenic photos of the alps. The Lions had hidden easily and the paladins’ infiltration of the building had gone smoothly.

The base was huge, but it turned out to only be manned by a small number of live soldiers. Most of the inhabitants were drones, easy to maneuver around without alerting security systems. The team had done this sort of thing many times before and at this point, it came pretty naturally.

It took a while, simply because of all the ground they had to cover to sabotage every single point of the facility Coran claimed needed to be sabotaged in order to ensure the place would be virtually impossible to resurrect. It made it all the harder that the paladins had to be gentle about it. The goal was to ruin the functionality of the building without having any irreparable impact on the planet, kind of like when they’d fought a Robeast on the Balmera. 

That went pretty smoothly as well. In the end, they didn’t even alert security until the final stages of the mission when they started having to enter into some of the more restricted areas. It hadn’t been that much of a setback. Keith, Lance, and Allura kept the enemy busy while Pidge and Hunk finished corrupting the building.

The base’s lack of live personnel put the Galra at a disadvantage. The paladins finished their objective and made their way out to their Lions again, a little roughed up, but mostly unscathed.

And that was when things stopped going as planned.

The base…exploded.

It exploded right as the Lions had been taking off.

Like, not just a part of the base, either. The entire base. It exploded.

The paladins hadn’t caused it. The scanners had still picked up live soldiers inside, so it didn’t make sense that the Galra would’ve caused it either. Although, victory or death…

Keith couldn’t think deeply on that, though. 

The force of the blast had been deafening and breath-stealing and bone-rattling and he and Black were hurtling. He couldn’t even tell which direction.

He couldn’t _think_.

* * *

Black was noiseless. No light. Nothing. Just metal. 

Hurtling.

Keith was an experienced pilot and usually handled a rough landing better than the average, but oh. My. _Damn._ This was beyond anything, _anything,_ he’d ever felt. 

He’d been knocked through space in just his armor before. He’d been hit head-on with blasts made of pure warped quintessence. This left all that seeming gentle by comparison. 

How high above ground had Black even _been_ when the explosion had thrown them? Why hadn’t the ‘hurtling aimlessly’ part stopped yet?

His ears were ringing and fuzzy from the blast, but distantly, he knew he should be hearing _something_ coming from the comms.

 _No one’s swooping in and stopping me from falling_ , he realized.

The other paladins…were…were they…?

Keith felt his head lolling against the seat as he continued to swing through the air. His mind spun. He couldn’t think.

* * *

 

Somehow, he managed to stay conscious, but it would’ve been better if he hadn’t. The force of hitting whatever it was that ended his descent winded him badly and _hurt_ deep in his muscles, the ache extending through his jaw and his teeth. Keith choked on a breath, blinking rapidly through the pitch black around him. He couldn’t see anything; only feel. 

And hear himself struggling to catch his breath. 

And…something else.

At first he thought it was the comms crackling back to life, but that wasn’t right. Even with his sense of hearing still fuzzy and his brain fogged, he knew the sound wasn’t right for it to be the comms. A moment later, a rush of icy cold hit him above his ankles, and it came to him all at once what it was he was hearing.

Water.

It was flooding into Black, flooding fast. It’d been water. They’d hit water.

Adrenaline spiked through Keith’s entire body. Black was damaged. Water was getting in. This could get bad quickly. He needed to get out. He needed to get out!

“Black,” he said, and his voice was so muffled in his reeling ears, but even so, he could hear his own edge of fear. He scrambled against his seat, movements sloppy, weakened from the ordeal, but he had the strength to get out; there was no other option. Keith could get out. “Black, if you can hear me, I’ll come back for you. I’ll come ba—“

The words caught in his throat. Keith couldn’t get out.

He hadn’t noticed it before. It was too dark to see, too much going on to really feel, maybe he was numb from the adrenaline, but he couldn’t get out of his seat. 

Black wasn’t just unresponsive; Black was ruined. He could feel it now, hands outstretched, touching the expanse of jagged metal contorted over his lap. The entire front of the cockpit was bent around him, pinning Keith to the seat, the seat itself jammed into place. 

Keith tried to work his legs, wriggle them even a little. If there was just a bit of give…but there wasn’t. There wasn’t anything. Unmoving hardness pressed against the tops of his thighs. He was trapped, legs pinned to the floor and the seat, pinned to Black’s cockpit by Black’s cockpit. The sound of water rushing, rising, roared in his ears.

“Black!” Keith’s head tossed back against the seat as he tried to buck, to move _something_. A stab of pain ran through his left leg. “ _Shit_. Black! Let me out!”

Keith fumbled over his armor, trying to activate his bayard, use it to cut away the metal, get some leverage, maybe? But that wasn’t working either. He couldn’t get it to materialize. Couldn’t even get his helmet to close, never mind the comms. Oh, no. Oh, no, oh, no, oh, _no_ …

Calm down.

He took a slow, steadying breath.

Focus.

He could do this.

He could barely feel it through the armor, but there were places where the armor had broken, he guessed, probably crushed where the cockpit had folded in, and it was through those cracks in his armor Keith could feel the water even though he couldn’t see it. It was up to his knees now.

It was okay. 

The Castle Ship was close by when the explosion had happened, wasn’t it? It had been hovering just above this planet. They’d know something had gone wrong. Shiro would know to come. Help was on the way. The other Lions, too…

Keith bit down on his lip. 

His fists shook against the bent metal pinning down his lap.

 _Calm down_.

The other lions were fine. 

He’d been one of the last to make it to his Lion. He’d been the last to take off. He’d been closest to the blast. Hell, he’d been flying right over that base when it had happened. If he was fine, so were they. Some might even still have power. 

He hoped to god some still had power. 

Keith’s heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline spiking for a whole new reason. His mind was still racing from the explosion and the fall and the impact and the danger currently at hand, but for a moment, all he could think of were the faces of his friends and Hunk’s belly laugh and sound of Lance’s sneeze and, oh, god, they could be pinned to their cockpits _too_ and there could be water rushing in and Pidge’s lion was so much smaller than Black, than everyone’s! If Green was flooding like Black was…

Keith’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking and the water was up to his waist. He felt around for Black’s controls, finding only one bent in a way he could really move it at all, and even then it was only about a half inch of wobble. He jerked it back and forth with both hands as hard as he could.

“Wake up. Wake up! Come on!” Keith bucked and yanked the control, pain coursing through both legs, but he didn’t care. He ground his teeth. “Wake _up_! Damn it! Let me out! I have to get to my team!”

Black wasn’t responding at all, though. Keith may as well have been pleading with rubble. The water was coming in faster. It swallowed his waist, lapping at his chest, seeping into the cracks in his armor so icy cold it made him gasp.

“No,” Keith sputtered. 

It was okay. 

Help would come. 

If it wasn’t here yet, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that meant the other paladins were being rescued first. Black was the biggest of all the Lions. If they were all flooding like this, Keith had the most time. This was fine. Everything was fine.

The water rose over his arms.

This was fine. This was fine.

He could do this.

He tilted his head back instinctively, eyes pleading with the empty dark. The Black Lion rocked, rocked him with it, slow, carried by gentle waves. Keith could smell the salt rising beneath him. This was saltwater, like the seas on Earth, he realized vaguely. 

And the mountains had looked like Earth’s mountains. 

This ‘endangered planet’ was like Earth.

Keith hadn’t had much on Earth. Now that Shiro was in space, Keith guessed he had nothing on Earth anymore. But it was home. Well, it was one of them. He missed it like he missed every bed he’d ever slept in and had to leave behind. A deep ache settled in Keith’s ribs. His breath shook.

Keith reached his dripping hand up and smacked the side of his helmet, like trying to get an old TV to work, like that would be enough for the comms to just magically turn on.

“Shiro?” he said, voice small and scared and alone in the dark. “Coran? Anyone?” He swallowed, forced the words out a little louder, “Can you hear me?”

Black rocked with another wave, making a terrible creaking sound that grated Keith to the soul. The water sloshed over his neck, to his chin. Black kept rocking. Keith gasped.

“I…I can’t…mm!”

His hand slammed over his nose and mouth as another wave brought the water up over his face. Keith’s eyes squeezed shut as water rushed into his open helmet then fell back to his chin again. His face stung with cold as it was re-exposed to the air.

“Somebody help!” he spluttered. “Get me out! Black! Open up!”

He scrambled uselessly against Black. He couldn’t even hear the water rushing anymore. Could only feel it rise. His teeth chattered. His hands planted at either side of the seat, pushing up, spine straight, neck craned as far as it could go, head tilted back so far the vertebrae burned. 

The water was at his ears now. Everything was muffled. Another soft wave covered the top of his face again and it lasted longer this time. He resurfaced and he was gasping, feeling the edges of water touch the corners of his mouth now. His eyes stung from the salt. A whimper caught in his throat. 

His heart throbbed with raw terror.

Oh, God. Drowning was supposed to really hurt, wasn’t it? This was going to hurt.

That was fine. Pain was fine. He could handle it. They’d get him out. He could do this. Stay calm. Focus.

“Pidge, please,” Keith grit out. “H-Hunk? Allura?”

He went down again, then back up. Down and up. Gasping and choking in between. Keith struggled through it, pushing up with his hands as hard as he could, his legs throbbing so badly it made him groan, but _nothing_ moved.

He stayed surfaced for a moment, face just barely exposed. He was shaking all over. His voice constricted in his throat.

“Hey…Lance?” He coughed and spluttered. The water was so high now he couldn’t speak without it getting in his mouth. “Shiro? Please…g-get me out.”

The water lapped over his mouth again and he pursed his lips together tight, breathing quick and deep through his exposed nostrils. One time, two times, three.

The water rose over his entire face again. He strained against his seat. Thrashing. Fighting. 

This time, the waves didn’t bring him back up far enough to resurface.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it for chapter one! Chapter 2 hopefully soon since it's already in rough-draft form, but I'm not keeping any set schedule for updates. Too stressful :/
> 
> Please comment if you like this so far and would like to read more! I will definitely reply and, like, positive feedback really does help writers to keep writing :)


	2. Some things, you don't get back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consequences of the mission-gone-wrong become apparent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! Hope everyone's having a good weekend! I don't believe there's any updates that I need to make in my tags with the addition of this chapter, but if I've missed something, please feel free to let me know! Thank you to everyone who gave me positive feedback! It's the reason I was able to gather the motivation to get this done in the time that I did. You guys are awesome!

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO

“So, yeah,” Lance continued, words flowing easily. He rubbed blue lotion into his chin with his fingertips. “I had blisters on my shoulders for a week. Never doing that again. SPF fifty doesn’t mean it’s super powerful or anything. The number actually just means that’s how many minutes you can wait before you reapply. And _that_ is why you always reapply sunscreen on beach trips, no matter how fancy your sunscreen is.”

There was a sharp clatter. Lance turned his head to see Keith had slammed his toothbrush down against the bathroom counter. Keith was gripping the edge of his sink, his eyes unnaturally wide, shoulders hunched up. That seemed…bad.

“I think Shiro’s sick of me,” Keith said.

Lance froze.

“He’s being nice about it,” Keith continued, eyes down, telling it all to the drain. “But I can tell. I’ve known him too long not to…to notice. Something changed. While he was gone. Or…or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I just…stayed the same and that wasn’t what he’d hoped for. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I can tell he’s not happy with the way things are, but he argues every time I try to get out of his way and I never even wanted to be the leader, but I tried, and, and it’s not good enough, he’s sick of me, he…I never wanted…”

A shiver ran through Keith, and as he stilled, something in his eyes seemed to clear, a certain awareness returning to him. He frowned, shifting his gaze to meet Lance’s eyes like he’d just remembered he was there. 

“He’s,” Keith said, frown deepening, “the only person, the _only_ one, who never gave up on me, and I can tell…I can just tell…that he’s about to. I mean, it’s not like I’m giving him a choice.” 

Lance could feel the lotion drying onto his fingers, but he didn’t move. He stood still, listened. Keith was glaring, but the glare didn’t match the words or his tone of voice. This was serious. Keith was being vulnerable. Keith didn’t just _do that_. And he’d come to Lance.

“No,” Lance said, “I got you.” He kept his tone purposely casual. Excessive shows of sympathy tended to freak Keith out. “But Shiro’s not like that, you know?”

Keith just stared at him. Silence. 

Lance cleared his throat and added, “And even if he was, it’s not just Shiro anymore, dude. I mean,” Lance shrugged, “it doesn’t have to be. Worst case scenario, you’ve still got us.”  

For a moment, nothing happened. The silence was back. Keith just stared.

Then, slowly, Keith’s entire demeanor shifted.

That hard, challenging glare from before slackened into wide eyes and a mouth slightly ajar. His already pale skin drained of color. And Keith just kind of…stood there. Looking freaked.

Lance gulped.

Keith blinked. He looked away and nodded awkwardly, the color slowly returning to his skin, but he still didn’t speak.

Not really sure what else to do, Lance went back to lathering his face in night-cream and, like an impulse he couldn’t control, he was suddenly filling the silence again. 

Minutes passed of Lance just talking about a hundred random things and Keith still wasn’t saying anything. He was just staring at his sink.

Eventually, Hunk came into the bathroom too, and some of the tension eased with someone besides just Lance willing to carry the conversation. Keith slipped out of the room soon after that and Lance did Keith the service of pretending not to notice. 

As soon as Keith was gone, though, Hunk gave Lance a concerned look and said, “Hey, is he okay?”

Lance let out a breath, leaning against the counter. He really wasn’t sure. But… 

“I think so,” Lance said. “I think he will be.”

Well, he hoped so. He hoped he hadn’t just messed that up. 

* * *

PRESENT

“Keith?” Lance shouted. “Keith!”

_“Anything, Lance?”_ Shiro’s voice in the comms, fierce and demanding.

“Not yet!” said Lance, raising his voice above the sound of the waves tossing the badly crushed Black Lion he was currently clinging to like a raft. 

He’d opened his visor in hopes of being loud enough for Keith to hear through the metal since Keith hadn’t been responding on the comms. Red hovered above, claws sunken into Black’s body, keeping Black at the surface but unable to lift the deadweight any further. Lance held on one handed in order to activate his bayard. 

“It’s pretty loud here, Shiro!” Lance said. “He might not be able to hear me! Or the other way around! I’m gonna try to pry the hatch open with my gun!”

_“No, Lance!”_ Shiro said. _“Leave the hatch and sit tight! Allura and I are on our way! One wrong move and you could end up flooding the cockpit and we don’t want you getting sucked down with it!”_

“There’s no guarantee water hasn’t already gotten inside! Guys, I’ve never seen anything like this! Black looks…Black looks really, really bad!”

_“Lance, listen to me,”_ Allura piped up, voice crackling through the comms. _“Shiro is right. Do not attempt to open the Black Lion in any way. The Lions are built for this sort of thing. No matter how bad it looks on the outside, I assure you, the cockpit will have held. The Black Lion is too heavy for the Red Lion to lift on its own. If you penetrate Black as things are now, water will likely rush in and Black will be sucked down before you are able to get to Keith! Do not risk it!”_

Lance ignored them. He got where they were coming from, but their concern was misplaced and he didn’t have time to explain that to them just now. 

He’d grown up close to the coast. Roads flooded annually. He knew the precautionary steps to getting out of a flooded vehicle like most kids knew fire safety. He knew this was dangerous. But he was a strong swimmer. He wasn’t planning on shooting around at random, poking holes into the Black Lion until it sank. He knew how this worked. 

If the cockpit had really held like Allura had just said, the hatch wouldn’t even open. The pressure of the water outside of it wouldn’t allow it. The door would only open if it was completely flooded on the other side.

 And Lance had a feeling about this. He had a feeling deep in his gut telling him he needed to try, needed to get Keith out _now_. Not in a few ticks or five minutes or whatever it was Shiro and Allura insisted he wait. It needed to be now.

Black was twisted up pretty bad. Most of the hatch was still beneath the Lion, but part of the door had been crushed up one of its sides. Lance gripped here. 

It was warped into Black, for the most part, not much of an angle to get any leverage, but there was a place that puckered at one corner Lance had been pulling on with his fingers. He’d managed to wrench it up enough now to fit the butt of his gun in the space. 

Lance’s muscles burned with the effort, even with the leverage his bayard provided. The metal had really bent badly. He was just prying metal tangled into metal. A little more, though. A little further and the door would actually start opening. _If_ it started opening.

He’d have to be fast if that happened.

_Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe everything was actually fine. Maybe he was just mistaking a gut feeling for what was really just panic and Allura and Shiro were right and he was overreacting._

Another hard pull was all it would take to find out.

Lance drew in a breath.

“Get ready!” he called up to Red.

A chorus of protests crackled through his comms all at once.

_“Lance, what are you…?”_

_“Get ready for what?”_

_“Wait, Lance! Don’t…!”_

_“Don’t even think about…!”_

_“We’re almost there! Just—“_

The hatch pulled away under his grip.

* * *

 

Lance wasn’t sure how his day had gotten so bad. How everything, just… _everything_ had gone to hell.

He’d been right. Black had been completely flooded. But it got so much worse.

Keith had been pinned to his seat by the Lion’s mangled cockpit. Black had been completely unresponsive, as had Keith’s armor and helmet—oxygen supply included. The helmet hadn’t even been closed. And Keith’s unconscious body had been completely submerged.

Lance had tried uselessly to pry his friend out with his own strength, but, in the end, it was Red who did it. 

Usually seeming borderline indestructible, Black had been weakened enough structurally from the explosion’s damage to be susceptible to more damage, it turned out. Without any warning or asking permission first, Red had literally pried the Black Lion open with her claws, nearly to the point of tearing Black’s body in two.

The movement had stirred the water in and around Black’s body badly. Lance had lost his grip on the pilot’s chair for a couple moments, hitting a warped edge of ceiling then slamming into twisted up dashboard so hard he could feel an ache jolt through his back in spite of his still functional armor.

He didn’t complain, though.

Red’s actions had been messy, but they had been enough to free Keith. Lance had yanked him from the seat the moment he’d felt Keith’s body begin to loosen, hands tucked under Keith’s armpits, then propelling them both up to the surface by kicking off Black with his feet. 

Black had sunk to the bottom as little more than scrap metal then, and Lance hadn’t let himself spare it a second thought. Guiltily, he hadn’t had time to.

He broke through the surface with Keith, and Red was already scooping them both up in her mouth and launching away from the water like the mere proximity could make Keith drown harder.

Keith’s face was ghostly pale, translucent, purplish, lips a sickening shade of blue. He wasn’t breathing. A quick check revealed a lack of pulse. 

For a split moment, Lance’s mind stuttered with it.

_Too late._

Then Lance was moving, moving fast.

Lance began CPR like a human machine, using his own tunnel vision to guide him. Their mismatched helmets were tossed to the side along with Keith’s chest-plate, Lance steadying Keith’s head with his hands against the cold, wet floor. 

The voices of the other paladins on the comms rang through Red’s cockpit, but Lance couldn’t hear any of it. Couldn’t process the words. He was counting compressions. He was timing rescue breaths in his head—one Mississippi; another, one Mississippi. Over and over and over again. A minute. Still no heartbeat. Still no pulse.

Lance thumped him on the chest then started compressions again.

“Come on, man,” he was muttering, barely aware of his own words as he pumped again. Again. “Come on.”

Lance’s heart was pounding against his ribs, blood roaring in his ears. 

His thoughts petered in and out like waves.

One Mississippi. One Mississippi.

Oh, God. This wasn’t happening. Oh, God.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

One, two, three, four…

_He looks like a kid._

Lance swallowed down the thought, but it was already there, and now it was all he could think.

God! Why?

Keith was _older_ than Lance. Admittedly, he was also a little bit shorter, but Lance had never really thought of Keith as _small_ before. 

Right now, though, pushing down on Keith’s chest over and over, watching his pale, limp body rock from the compressions, eyes closed, mouth slack and un-breathing, Keith looked so freaking young. 

Lance felt like a straight up kid too right now, to be fair. 

The more times he pushed down on Keith’s chest, the more helpless he felt, and, _dang it!_ All he could really process or think about for a moment was that look of embarrassment on Keith’s face earlier that morning when Lance had jokingly accused him of _worrying_ ; how Keith had tried to play along with the teasing afterward like normal, but something about him had been too serious, too real, like Keith honest to God believed deep down that he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, like Keith wasn’t even sure he was allowed to care. Or maybe he was scared to. Keith had admitted to having that problem before, hadn’t he?

What if that was it? 

What if Lance never got to ask?

_No._

_Stop thinking stuff like that. He’s gonna be fine!_

Lance pressed his ear to Keith’s chest, searching for a heartbeat. _Praying_ for a heartbeat. 

Lance heard the _thump-thump_ in a haze of near disbelief.

It was weak, but it was a heartbeat. He wasn’t dead. Keith wasn’t dead. Lance was shaking all over. Keith wasn’t dead.

“There you go, buddy,” Lance said, tucking his fingers under Keith’s jaw where the pulse was to make sure it stayed. Keith still wasn’t breathing, but this was still a win. “That’s it. Good job. You got this. Come on and breathe now. Take a breath, Keith.”

Keith didn’t take a breath, but his color was looking better now that his heart had started trying again. Lance continued to breathe for him at the proper intervals, counting in his head again. 

One Mississippi, two Mississippi…

“Come on back to us, Keith. Come on.”

…Four Mississippi, five Mississippi; pinch his nose and _blow_ ; one Mississippi.

“It’s okay,” Lance said. A trembling hand through Keith’s wet hair, two fingers still pressed to Keith’s thready pulse. Lance’s stomach twisted. Keith was so cold. “You’re okay. I promise. You’re gonna be fine.”

More rescue breaths. Keith still didn’t take one on his own, but his pulse stayed.

The comms had never stopped being flooded with voices, but suddenly one stood out, volume and tone lurching past the others. 

_“Lance! What happened?!”_

Shiro.

It barely sounded like Shiro.

It was so _sharp_.

Lance’s mind honestly blanked a little at the tone, losing count for the rescue breaths, mouth opening but finding no words.

Then Red was slowing up, suddenly coming to a stop, landing on metal paws, and Lance realized they’d made it back to the Castle. The Red Lion lowered its head and opened its jaws. Lance saw Coran running toward them, heard his feet clanking against the metal floor with every fast step. 

“He’s not breathing!” Lance was saying, a hand still clutched to Keith’s hair. “I got his pulse to come back, but he’s…he’s not…”

“Not to worry, Paladin,” Coran said, a hand on Lance’s shoulder firmly guiding him aside. “I’ll take it from here.”

* * *

 

Lance remembered with a detached kind of horror that the explosion of the Galra base had sent Pidge and the Green Lion into the side of one of the snowy peaks and Hunk and Allura had both gone after her in their Lions while Lance had split off after Keith. 

Pidge’s situation in particular had been precarious. Not only had Green crashed horribly, power cut off and comms unresponsive, but the snow around her had become unstable from the impact and it had taken both Yellow and Blue to dig her out, all in the midst of an actual avalanche. Almost immediately after the explosion even happened, Matt had flown down and joined them in the Pidge-retrieval efforts, because of course he had.

Lance hadn’t been paying attention as much by the time they had actually got Pidge out, though. By then, he had been of a one-track mind in his search for Keith and Black. 

They’d all lost visual on the Black Lion when the blast had sent her flying, but it didn’t truly scare Lance until he’d realized Red wasn’t able to pick Black up on the scanners. Any signal was completely gone.

Considering how close the Black Lion had been when the explosion happened and how much further it seemed to have been thrown than the other Lions, Lance had figured it was likely Black had lost power like Green had. The fact that Keith hadn’t been responding on the comms had also been a little freaky, though it wasn’t like that had never happened before.

At some point, though, Shiro had started freaking out too at how long it was taking to even locate Keith and had decided to grab a random craft out of the hangars and join Lance in the search. That had made things feel _really_ serious.

Eventually, Hunk and Matt and Allura had successfully gotten Green and Pidge out and Matt was getting Pidge to the med bay and Hunk was hauling Green back to the Castle with Yellow, and, with that taken care of, Allura had joined Shiro and Lance in the search. 

It was around then when Lance had spotted the beach and the ocean and the weird way the waves were rolling over _something_.

The something had been the wreckage of the Black Lion.

By the time Lance had made it back with Keith, Hunk had already been back at the Castle for a while.

Matt was sitting on the floor beside Pidge’s pod, his legs curled to his chest and his face buried in his arms, completely silent. Lance and Hunk stood side by side, both yet to change out of their armor, Lance shaking beyond what he could really control, Hunk’s arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Hunk hadn’t tried comforting Matt at all since Lance had joined them, and Lance wondered vaguely if maybe Hunk had tried before Lance got there and if it had maybe ended badly.

Pidge and Keith floated unconscious in their respective pods, reminding Lance of lab specimens kept in jars. The two were in the white coveralls with the built in sensors that monitored their vitals and conditions, information projected in symbols that Lance didn’t know how to read, but could guess. 

Coran had wasted no time in getting Keith prepped and podded, but the crease in the man’s brow as he had left the room to meet Allura and Shiro at the hangars had been unmistakable. He’d said Pidge would make a full recovery from the fractures and nasty concussion she’d come back with. He hadn’t said anything about Keith yet.

For a long time, it seemed like, Hunk and Lance just stood there without saying a word to each other. It wasn’t like there were no words. They just…neither of them needed to say them now. Hunk understood. Lance really appreciated that.

Finally, though, Lance had to say something. Not everything, but something. His voice came out hoarse and quiet. “You sore, dude?”

Hunk didn’t speak for a moment. Lance felt his friend’s shoulder rise slowly against him in a shrug. 

“Mm. I guess.” Hunk spoke in a near whisper, probably trying to stay out of Matt’s earshot. “The whole place blew up, but it was worse from certain spots in the building or, like, certain angles? I think _they_ just got the worst angles out of all of us, you know?” Lance tore his eyes off the pods to watch Hunk blink slowly at their comatose teammates. “I’m alright. You?”

“I’m…” Lance froze up. He didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t know how he was. He tried again. “I’m…numb. Feels like I might be sick to my stomach.”

Hunk gave him a grim smile and said softly, “Same here. Probably normal.” 

Lance nodded choppily, clasping his shaking hands in front of him and squeezing them, _hard_. 

“Think Shiro’s mad at me?” Lance said.

“Huh?” said Hunk. “Why would he be mad?”

“Went against orders.”

“It was a good call.”

“He yelled on the comms.”

“We all did.”

“Yeah, but Shiro _really_ yelled.”

Hunk hugged his arm tighter around Lance in a reassuring squeeze. “It was his worried yell, not his angry yell.”

Lance peeked up at Hunk. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

Lance let out a shaky breath.

His eyes went back to the healing pods. Specifically, Keith’s healing pod. Keith’s coloring was completely un-blue now thanks to the pod’s replenishing abilities, but he was still so pale. He looked dead. Lance swallowed against the twist in his stomach.

The med bay’s doors swooshed open, but Lance didn’t look back at first, assuming it was just Coran returning. Hunk made a small noise of surprise, though, and then there was a hand on Lance’s shoulder that was too hard to be flesh, gentle as its grip was. 

Suddenly, Lance was looking up at Shiro, whose eyes were locked on Keith’s pod now same as Lance’s had been moments before.

“Sh-Shiro…” Lance said. “I…”

Shiro met Lance’s eyes, face looking drawn and pale. “Thank God you’re okay.”

A quick tug at his shoulder was all the warning Lance got before he was suddenly trapped in a three-person hug. Hunk, who’d been pulled in with him, was squished tight to his side. Shiro’s metal fingers cupped the back of Lance’s head, pressing him against his shoulder. Shiro was in his regular clothes. He hadn’t even taken the time to pull on his armor before joining the rescue efforts. For some reason, that hit Lance hard. He shivered.

“Sorry it took me so long, Lance,” Shiro said. “Sorry you had to deal with that on your own. But you did such a good job. You both did such a good job bringing your teammates back home.”

Beside him, Hunk sobbed.

Lance twisted his fingers into the back of Shiro’s vest. Shiro’s arm tightened around him, even though Lance’s paladin armor was wet and probably poking Shiro through his shirt. 

“M’sorry,” Lance said, eyes squeezing shut. “S-so sorry…I should’ve…if I’d found him faster…and the Black Lion…”

Shiro hushed him softly, but this close, Lance could feel the way Shiro trembled as he breathed.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Shiro said, even though it wasn’t. “You did a good job. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

* * *

The rest of the day was kind of a blur. At some point, Allura and Hunk went back to the planet to salvage the pieces of Black out of the ocean while Coran watched over them from the Castle close by. No Galra came and attacked. No one interfered or pursued. Lance would’ve thought more about how weird that was if he hadn’t been in such a weird emotionally drained fog to begin with.

They all ate. Couple times. Lance couldn’t really stomach much. He was feeling more and more numb as hours passed, not so much overwhelmed by his thoughts anymore as he seemed to be just shutting down from them, but he had an undercurrent of unease that made eating difficult.

He felt the most calm sitting in front of the healing pods, not really looking into them anymore. Just being near them. It eased the nerves just enough to sink him into the mental buzz of non-thinking, blanking out. 

At some point, he finally took Hunk’s advice and changed out of his armor into some regular clothes, which, yeah, in a detached kind of way, he could admit that felt a little better. He ended up in the med bay with the healing pods again, though, back to blanking out just in different clothes. He was vaguely aware Matt was there too. 

Lance’s muscles were sore. He took some painkillers. More blanking out. Shiro checked on him again, or maybe it was Keith Shiro was really checking on. Shiro stayed a while and Lance barely kept track of him. 

Later in the day, they had a team meeting, but it wasn’t really a team meeting because two of the members of said team were unconscious in healing pods and Lance may as well have been with how little he really listened or added to the conversation. He caught Coran saying something about the explosion having given off large quantities of corrupted quintessence, but not anything about why that was or what it meant.

Evening came and Lance was exhausted and there wasn’t much going on to stay awake for, so he turned in early. Allura hugged him on his way out of the common room and it was soft, like she was hugging something fragile and not an actual nearly grown person, but Lance still cringed, because even with the painkillers, his back throbbed from the slightest pressure. He noted absently, that must’ve knocked into Black’s wreckage harder than he’d thought when he’d been getting Keith out. Not that that mattered now.

He left everyone’s exhausted gazes behind and retreated into his bedroom, snuggling under the soft covers without even bothering to brush his teeth or wash his face or even change into pajamas. Sleep took him quickly, deep and dreamless and just blank. The mattress beneath him kind of felt like it was rocking over waves. 

* * *

Lance woke up with his face squished against a warm shoulder. His eyes opened slowly, honing in on the sunflower-yellow pajamas directly in front of him.

“Hunk?” Lance muttered.

The shoulder shifted a little. Lance looked up and Hunk was looking down at him, brown eyes bright with awareness. Hunk had probably been awake for a while. 

Lance looked at the bed. Hunk’s yellow pillow was wedged in beside his and Hunk had his own blanket, too, but this was definitely Lance’s bed they were both squeezed into. Not that Lance was complaining. He just…had zero recollection of this happening?

“What’s going on?” Lance asked. “Did you sneak in here?”

Hunk’s brow wrinkled at that. “Um, no? I came to you last night, remember? We talked in the doorway for, like, ten minutes before you told me to just grab my stuff and have a sleepover. _I_ told you we didn’t have to, but _you_ said you didn’t think I should…be alone.”

Lance’s heart sank a little at that, reading between the lines. “Anxiety?”

Hunk’s gaze drifted to the side, the look on his face confirmation enough. Dang it.

“Sorry, man,” Lance said, sinking back, giving Hunk’s arm a pat. “I don’t remember. I think I was really tired.”

Hunk chuckled at that. “Yeah, you were. You were already asleep when I came back with my stuff and I was only gone, like, twenty seconds, tops.”

Lance smiled, though it felt a little heavy. “Mm. We had a long day yesterday.”

Lance felt Hunk’s muscles tense against his arm.

“How are you feeling?” Hunk asked, voice quiet. “Better?”

Lance stared at the ceiling. “It’s easier to think. After the adrenaline wore off yesterday, I think I kind of just…stopped, you know? Still doesn’t feel real, though. I’m super tired.”

Lance could hear Hunk’s pillowcase rustle with a slow nod.

“How about you, buddy?” Lance said.

Hunk’s breath shuddered. Lance pressed his arm a little firmer against his friend’s.

“I keep,” Hunk said, “thinking about what it’d be like. If they weren’t here, you know?”

Lance swallowed hard. He nodded.

“Like,” Hunk said, “if we’d really lost them? Everything would be different. I’d miss them so much. I don’t think I could handle it. Not just missing them, though. I don’t think I could handle them not existing in general. Just them existing is… _important_.”

“They’re here, Hunk,” Lance said. “They’re still here.”

“I know,” Hunk said, voice watery. “I know. It’s just hard.”

“Yeah, it is.” 

Hunk curled his face against Lance’s arm and for a while Lance held him, patting his back and pressing his cheek to the top of Hunk’s soft head.

* * *

Everything hurt.

The escapades of yesterday had all caught up with him, it seemed. Lance was cringing all the way to the showers. He stayed in there a while, turning the water up as hot as he could stand, hoping to ease some of the stiffness. 

It worked, a little. He was able to move with mostly just a dull kind of soreness as long as he kept his movements small. Shiro patting him on the back at the breakfast table, though, made his eyes water from the residual stabs of pain. Lance went off and got some fresh painkillers as soon as he’d finished his goo.

“You still sore, dude?” Hunk said as he watched Lance swallow three capsules. It was just them in the med bay right now besides their unconscious teammates. Hunk pointed to an unoccupied healing pod with his thumb. “Maybe you should…”

Lance shook his head, forcing his wince to become a smile. The pods were not his favorite. “Nah, it’s not that bad. Just annoying.”

Hunk quirked a brow. “I’ve seriously seen you get up and keep fighting after being _blown up_ , so…”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Hunk.”

“Maybe you being _able_ to tolerate it doesn’t actually mean you should?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Lance said. “You’re just spooked from yesterday, buddy. It’s okay.”

Hunk sighed, shoulders slumping. “Yeah. I guess. Whatever you say, dude.”

* * *

Hunk, of course didn’t mean that. 

Lance must have still been slightly out of it, because he really should’ve seen it coming. Once Hunk got suspicious about something, it was pretty much impossible to get him to lay off. Lance was reminded of this fact like a swift kick to the gut when Shiro entered the med bay about fifteen minutes after Hunk had vacated it.

“So,” Shiro said. “Hunk tells me you’ve been sore since the mission yesterday?”

Lance shoved two hands deep in his jacket pockets, shoulders slumping, making sure to give Shiro his very best ‘done’ face. The movement kind of hurt, but it was worth it if it got his displeasure across. 

“Seriously?” Lance said. “He _tattled_? Not cool.”

Shiro rubbed the back of his head. “He’s worried, buddy. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Lance said. “I mean, yeah, I’m sore. That’s normal after a tough one. That mission was _shit_ , but it’s not like I’m…”

His gaze shot away from Shiro and landed instead on his teammates still floating in the pods. 

A gentle hand rested on Lance’s shoulder. Lance bit his lip.

“Yeah,” Shiro said.

“Yeah,” Lance said.

Pidge had regained her color. The gash on her forehead was completely gone now, though Lance guessed there may still have been a small scar hiding under her bangs. She looked like she could’ve been sleeping instead of unconscious, though. Probably about ready to come out.

Keith looked like…

Lance shuddered against the memory of Black’s cockpit, screwed up like a crumpled ball of paper, pinning Keith’s drowning body to the jammed seat like a death sentence.

He stopped his thoughts there, screwing his eyes shut for a moment. His heart sunk to his belly.

“Lance?” Shiro said. “He’s going to be okay.”

The truth was, Lance was growing less and less sure of that. But he couldn’t voice that to Shiro. There was no way he could.

Lance knew how these things worked, maybe better than Shiro did, knew from living near the coast and from summers spent lifeguarding and from a random story he overheard his step-aunt tell at some random family reunion he remembered little else about. 

Lance knew that drowning happened quickly and near-drowning had consequences. He knew that healing pods were incredible, but they weren’t magic. They hadn’t given Shiro back the arm he’d lost or gotten rid of the scar across his nose and Lance still had faint patches on his shoulders where his skin was just a little paler from when he’d put himself between Coran and an explosion.

Lance knew that stories varied, but his step-aunt’s story was about a physical therapy patient who had only been left alone in a pool for a few minutes, and that had resulted in permanent brain damage. The guy couldn’t move or talk or even breathe on his own. He never would again.

Lance swallowed that thought and every other thought that surfaced with it, the image of Keith trapped in Black’s cockpit, of how Keith’s skin had been blue before Lance had gotten his heart beating again and even then how Keith hadn’t breathed on his own.

The healing pod had done what it could. It had replenished the oxygen in Keith’s body like it had never been gone, probably better and more efficiently than any earth technology could’ve, but as for the damage already done…As for brain damage…

Lance wasn’t a genius like Pidge or Hunk or Matt, but he knew brain cells were the ones that never grew back.

Lance found himself eyeing Shiro’s prosthetic hand. Some things just didn’t come back, even in the pods.

Lance cringed.

“Sorry,” Shiro said, releasing his grip. “Was that hurting you?”

Lance shook his head, blanking out his expression again. He met Shiro’s eyes.

“I’m okay,” Lance said. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to zone out on you.”

For a moment, Shiro almost looked hurt. “No. Don’t apologize. It’s okay to be upset. We all are.” His smile was thin. “That mission _was_ shit.”

Lance did his best to return the smile, but it didn’t feel too convincing. “Complete shit,” he agreed. That, at least, was sincere.

“You went through a lot out there. Having to be the one to…” Shiro looked off to the side for a moment. 

“You don’t have to say it.”

Shiro met Lance’s eyes again. His expression was apologetic.

“Things might’ve been different,” Shiro said quietly. “If I hadn’t told you to wait.”

“No,” said Lance. “That wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

Shiro raised his eyebrows like he would argue, but Lance beat him to it. 

“I was never gonna wait,” Lance said. “You telling me to didn’t make things worse, Shiro. I was always gonna get him out as fast as I could.”

For a moment, Shiro just stood there, looking a little surprised.

“All right.” Shiro smiled, maybe a little amused, but still with that edge of an apology in his gaze. 

Lance bunched his fingers into the side of his pant leg. “Don’t blame yourself for this, okay?”

Shiro sighed. “Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. Then he looked upward, toward the pods. “As for the soreness…”

Lance couldn’t help but frown. “I’m not getting in a pod.”

“Maybe to be safe,” Shiro said. “You’ll feel better.”

“I doubt that,” Lance mumbled.

“Hunk will feel better,” Shiro said. “So will I. I don’t need any of you in unnecessary pain.”

Lance paused at that. He’d be the first to admit that he didn’t _like_ the pods. If treatment outside of them was effective and available, he’d almost always go for that. The only times he really used the healing pods was when he was too injured to protest. And this time in particular…it just didn’t feel right. Getting in a healing pod for a crick in his back while Keith and Pidge recovered from major injuries.

But if it would help Shiro feel more at ease, if it would give Shiro the power to fix something, even if all it was happened to be a sore back, if that helped just a little…

Lance opened his mouth.

The med bay doors swooshed open.

Lance and Shiro both turned as Allura entered the room. Her hair was tied up tight and she held a perfect posture, but Lance could see the dark circles under her eyes and the slight pinch in her brow. He wondered if she’d slept last night at all.

“There you two are,” she said, offering a small smile. “Should have guessed.”

“Everything all right?” Shiro said.

Lance didn’t miss the way Allura’s smile lost some of it’s light at the question.

“Pidge should be ready to wake up soon,” Allura said. “After she’s settled, Coran has asked us all to gather in one of the common rooms. To talk.”

Lance didn’t miss the way Allura hadn’t said whether everything really was alright. He didn’t miss the way she’d said the word ‘talk’ like it meant something more than the word itself. He didn’t miss the fact that they were meeting in a common room instead of the med bay, and that they were only waiting for Pidge to come out before they met, not Keith. He felt Shiro’s hand on his shoulder again.

“We can discuss whether you want a pod later,” Shiro said quietly.

Lance nodded, leaning into Shiro’s grip even though it hurt.

* * *

By the time they all congregated in the common area, Lance was pretty sure he’d already figured out what Coran was going to say. But he tried not to think about it until he knew for sure.

He’d missed Pidge coming out of the pod. 

He’d meant to be there. He really had. But then he’d figured out what Coran was probably going to say and the reality of things had picked right around that time to hit him, and he hadn’t wanted to freak Pidge out with that. 

He’d started sobbing on his way out of his room—the loud, uncontrollable kind—and he knew how it was to come out of a pod, how jarring and scary those first few minutes could be while your mind reoriented itself with what had happened and where you were now and what you’d missed. He didn’t want to make it harder for Pidge with his meltdown, so he’d stayed in his room and let the moment pass. Well, several moments, really.

The crying finally stopped and Lance drank a bit of water and washed his face and, even if it was only by a little, he did feel better. There was going to be no mistaking it, though, if his reflection in the mirror was anything to go by. His eyes were going to be puffy for hours. Everyone would know he’d been crying. But, then again, pretty soon, he was sure everyone would be crying anyway, so it wasn’t like it mattered that much.

He tried not to think about it.

He entered the common room, finding Pidge already there, wearing her cotton shirt and shorts instead of the medical suit. She was tucked against Matt’s side on the couches with a fluffy white blanket over both their laps. Allura stood behind them, stroking Pidge’s hair with a fond smile while Pidge tried to make light about something with a shaky grin. Shiro was sitting at Pidge’s other side, but when he saw Lance come in, he scooted enough to make room for Lance to sit between them. Lance took the spot gratefully.

“Hey, Pidge,” Lance said, swinging an arm around her shoulders, overlapping with Matt’s arm already holding her tight. “How you doing?”

Pidge pressed her face into Lance’s side and grunted.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Me too.”

From over her head, Matt met Lance’s eyes. “We were just telling her how cool you were yesterday, rescuing Keith all by yourself? Pretty amazing. Took _three_ of us to dig Pidge out of the snow.”

Lance tried not to stiffen too much at the mention of Keith’s rescue, knowing Pidge would feel it.

“No big deal,” he said.

“I don’t remember a thing,” Pidge said into Lance’s side, words muffled by his shirt. “We were leaving the base and then I was waking up here.”

“I know the feeling,” Lance said, ruffling her hair and sitting back. “Don’t worry about it. You didn’t miss much.”

Hunk came in with a tray of steaming mugs, which he passed out to everyone before sitting down beside Matt. Good. Those two seemed back to their usual selves around each other. Lance had been too out of it yesterday to ask Hunk if things were okay, but it seemed Pidge coming out of the pod had made the concern unnecessary.

Coran came in just as Lance’s mug of tea was cooled enough to sip on. 

Allura finally sat down, Coran sitting beside her. The two Alteans were sitting directly across from everyone else, and Lance figured that wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t how people sat for just a little talk. Allura had her eyes focused on the wall behind their heads, which wasn’t like her. She normally met their eyes. 

Lance leaned against the steadiness of the couch back, fighting against the tightness building in his throat again, his heart beginning to hammer with the anticipation of what he was sure was coming, clinging hard to that last wilting hope that he was somehow wrong. He held his mug in one hand, resting it on his knee, no longer feeling any desire to drink from it.

The room was silent. Everyone else was probably catching the atmosphere same as Lance had. He didn’t see how anyone could miss it at this point. Beside him, he could feel Shiro shift a little on the couch like the quiet was making him restless.

Coran cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and meeting each person’s eyes with an open kind of seriousness that made Lance’s breath catch.

“So,” Coran said, finally, gaze settling on Shiro. “I think we’d better talk about Keith.”

Lance turned in time to see Shiro nod. Shiro’s signature ‘brave leader’ face was firmly intact but for the way his mouth had pursed into a thin, grim line. Lance’s stomach flopped.

“Lance,” Coran said, pulling his attention forward again. “I’d like to start by saying that you did everything that you could. Thanks to your efforts, Keith’s life is not in danger.”

Lance flexed his fingers, unsettled by the way Coran was saying this. Keith’s life not being in danger should’ve been good news, but the heaviness in Coran’s expression stayed exactly the same. 

“It is unlikely, however,” Coran said slowly, “that he will ever be quite the same.”

And there it was. What Lance had been waiting for. His last spark of hope was snuffed out like a pinched wick.

He sat there, listening to Shiro trying to muffle his breaths as they became rougher. Heard Hunk coming apart where he sat, felt Pidge trembling and Matt tugging her tighter to his side as Coran calmly explained what Lance had already guessed. 

That the human brain was a delicate thing. That Keith’s had been deprived of oxygen for too long. That he’d lost neurons, lots of them, enough to be a problem, enough to take things away. Functions, memories. Some things could improve with hard work, perhaps. Some things could maybe be relearned. They’d know more as they went. But Keith, Keith as they’d known him, was probably gone. 

Some things the healing pods just didn’t give back.

* * *

It was two days later when Lance stepped into the cold hangar, the automatic door slicing closed behind him. 

He had his hands balled in his jacket pockets, fingers digging in and clinging to the inner fabric, needing to grip _something_. Everything felt unstable. Nothing was normal anymore. Lance had begun to realize that nothing ever would be.

The remains of the Black Lion were laid out across the floor, broken parts lined up next to each other like a puzzle, tinier pieces collected on mats.

Everything had happened so fast when he and Red had been getting Keith out. Everything had been too urgent and desperate. He hadn’t thought. Hadn’t had time to feel what it really was they’d done. Black’s explosion-warped body had been ripped in two.

This wasn’t a quick-fix, or even a medium-fix. This was a we’ll-be-lucky-if-this- _can_ -be-fixed. If sentient robots could be killed, Lance was pretty sure this was that.

And that meant _Voltron_ …

Lance pulled his hands from his pockets and dragged his fingers through his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. The heels of his palms pressed into his temples. He stared at the Black Lion with wide, burning eyes. He didn’t know if he needed to scream or breathe or sob or what, but something. He needed _something_.

It came out as words.

“Sorry,” he said. “So sorry.”

He knelt at Black’s crumpled nose and, tentatively, he reached out. The Black Lion wasn’t and never had been his. But still. The urge to reach out to something broken, something that was hurt, was so strong, so normal. He leaned both his hands over the damaged metal face, pressing against it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, softer. “Didn’t mean to let this happen. We had to. Keith was dying. We had to.”

He leaned his forehead against it, letting the coolness seep into his skin.

In his soul, he felt nothing but the hollow metal. No presence, somehow even less presence than the lack of presence he’d felt trying to connect to Black in the past. It ached. The cold, dead feeling deep down that told him he was talking to nothing.

Lance shook his head and leaned back from Black’s nose. He didn’t remove his hands, though. He looked up to the cracked yellow eye above him.

“He’s…he’s doing all right,” Lance said. “He’s still in the pod. But he’s going to live. We got him out in time. I’m sorry we had to hurt you to do that. But he’s all right.” Lance took a slow, shaky breath. Carefully, he ran his palm over a particularly crushed bit of Black’s snout, hand tilting up and down with every bump. “We’re gonna do whatever it takes to fix you. To fix everything. I am so, _so_ sorry this happened. But it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna make this right. This isn’t it for you. Promise. You’ll be okay. We’re a team. We don’t give up on each other.” 

Lance’s grip tightened. He closed his eyes.

“We _don’t_ give up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter was kind of an odd mix of difficult and fun and just hard to write. I like how it turned out in the end, but it took FOREVER. I'm hoping the next one will be easier, but, yeah, I have no clue when I'll next update. I'll do my best to make it soon, but I'd rather take longer to post something workable than rush it and write myself into a corner. 
> 
> As always, positive feedback is much appreciated! Please let me know if you liked it! It truly helps!


	3. Sometimes things just suck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is just trying to keep it together. Things come up that make that harder and harder to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. My. Goodness. You guys, I am so sorry for taking so long to get this out. Literally a few days after posting last chapter, my brain decided it was depression time, and I did not see that coming. Writing hasn't just been hard. It's been impossible. I'm sorry. I know I said I wasn't keeping to an updating schedule, but I really didn't mean for it to be months. 
> 
> Anyway, somehow, this chapter is finally done, and that is thanks to many of you. Shout out to everyone who commented, especially those who came back and commented more than once to encourage me while it was taking so long. Like, I can't tell you how much that helped me. This chapter is dedicated to you. It has been a hard time. It's still a hard time. But I am so happy to have written another installment into this fic and I'm so glad to be getting it out to you! I promise I'm still working at it! I love this story too much to give up on it. I'll always update eventually, even if it takes me longer some times than others. Thanks for sticking with me <3
> 
> EDIT: just fixed the title of the chapter. I forgot I was trying to stick to a theme ;-; I'm so tired, guys.

Pidge was doubled up on painkillers to dull a headache that had put her in tremors earlier that morning and Lance was so wrung out emotionally that Shiro was pretty sure he wasn’t even paying attention to instructions over the comms anymore, but they were down a Lion and Keith was in a pod and the Universe went on. Team Voltron kept on keeping on. Or, their previously scheduled events did, anyway.

If thinking about it wasn’t so damn painful, Shiro would’ve been trying to construct an apology for ever making light of Keith’s distain for parades. As it was, most of his brain-power was currently occupied keeping his body upright on a rink of unexpectedly bumpy ice.

It had been Coran’s idea to switch from parades through the streets to shows in stadiums, pretend like all of this was on purpose and not because they _couldn’t_ form Voltron right now. The Black Lion was in pieces and the warped quintessence from the explosion had weakened the composition of the other Lions; it was reversible, but took time. The shows had honestly sounded like a terrible idea when Coran had pitched it, but Shiro had been tired and he’d decided to let this one burn on its own.

It didn’t burn.

Three shows in two days and it had already proved to be more effective than the parades ever had been. Which meant they would be doing more shows, probably. Because, why not? Shiro wanted to scream.

Instead, he posed with a smile that felt wooden and let the roars of the crowd meld with his heartbeat pounding in his ears. It was almost enough to drown out the sound of breath hitching through his comms. Almost.

Shiro scanned the other bodies on the ice as subtly as possible, eyes darting from teammate to teammate, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound without drawing attention to it.

It was difficult.

The paladins of Voltron were experienced. They were fighters. If someone was struggling, powering through wouldn’t be new to any of them. Everyone was holding their poses and had their grins firmly in place as Matt delivered the end of the Voltron Coalition’s recruitment speech from a platform at the ice rink’s edge.

It was Lance’s slightly open mouth that gave him away; everyone else had their grinning teeth clamped together and the sounds Shiro was picking up in the comms were definitely open-mouthed breathing. That was _it_ , though. Whatever was going on with Lance, he was keeping it together like a pro out there where appearances mattered, and in spite of the concern knotting Shiro’s stomach, there was a part of Shiro that was proud of Lance, in a strange, detached sort of way.

Matt’s speech over the stadium’s loudspeakers ended and he was suddenly speaking through the com-link in their helmets instead.

“ _And, that’s curtain. Go ahead and make your exits, guys. Awesome jobs all around!_ ”

As Shiro turned on the ice, he kept his gaze pinned to Lance. Lance, who held his pose just a split second too long, like he hadn’t registered Matt’s instructions himself and had only realized it was time to move because everyone around him was moving.

Shiro was about to glide in Lance’s direction, get a better read of what might be going on, but Hunk was already there, slowing his pace slightly to become even with Lance and cradling a hand discreetly beneath Lance’s elbow. It was only because Shiro was at ground level, only because he was already looking just where Hunk’s hand and Lance’s elbow met that he caught that Lance was letting Hunk take some of his weight. Both boys continued to smile out at the crowd, pictures of composure, waving back in answer to the applause until they’d made it off the ice and through the doors to the sectioned-off hallway with the rest of the team.

Shiro was two steps behind them. Isolated at last, Lance’s gate became an unsteady wobble. Shiro heard him cough two times in quick succession before Lance was pushing away from Hunk and yanking his blue helmet off to vomit on the carpeted hallway floor.

Pidge made a stifled noise like she’d lose it too.

Shiro acted quickly, pulling Hunk, who’d gone pale, back by his shoulder to swap places with him, shoving him and Pidge gently away.

“Matt, get them out of here,” Shiro said. “I’ve got this.”

“Sure thing,” Matt said. “Come on, guys.”

Hunk must’ve been acting like he’d argue with that, because Shiro heard Allura quickly adding, “Hunk, I could use some help gathering up the props,” and Lance and Shiro were alone in the hallway a moment later.

Lance’s helmet was on the floor now. He’d dropped it in favor of leaning one hand on his thigh, his arm keeping his body upright like a support beam. The other hand was balled up with the knuckles pressed against his closed lips. He stood there, doubled over slightly and shaking with wide, worried eyes, quick breaths coming in and out of his nose. Shiro kept his hand on Lance’s back, flat and steady, feeling the rise and fall of each jerky breath.

“Don’t fight it,” Shiro said quietly and Lance closed his eyes. “If more needs to come up…”

Lance shook his head sharply. He took another breath and mumbled against his fist. “‘M not.”

“Buddy…” Shiro started.

Arguing wasn’t necessary, though. Lance hunched forward and vomited again before Shiro could finish his sentence.

“Okay,” Shiro said, rubbing circles between Lance’s shoulders even though Lance probably couldn’t feel much through the armor. “Okay. You’re okay.”

Lance coughed and continued to retch. He wasn’t really bringing much up. It was all acid. Shiro frowned. No one had had much of an appetite lately, but it was looking like Lance hadn’t had anything on his stomach at all.

Shiro filed that information away for later. Lance was a little preoccupied right now for a lecture and Shiro honestly didn’t feel like giving one. It could wait.

Soon enough, Lance had evened his breath out. He looked exhausted, but the retching seemed to be over for the time being.

“Sorry,” Lance muttered on his next exhale. “M’sorry.”

Shiro gave his arm a gentle squeeze and kept his hand there. “No, you’re good. Sit down for a second?”

Lance accepted the suggestion with zero protest. Shiro guided him to the opposite wall to get a little distance from the puke soaking into the carpet and Lance sunk down with a trembling sigh. Shiro knelt beside him, pushing Lance’s bangs back to try to get a temperature. Lance’s forehead was clammy with sweat, but it was _cold_.

“No fever,” Shiro said, trying not to let the worry into his voice. Cold was okay, right? They’d just been on ice.

Lance’s gaze slid up to look Shiro in the eye, and the extra moisture gathering in Lance’s lower lashes could’ve easily been from strain if it hadn’t been for the way Lance’s lips were pursed together. Something in Shiro’s chest sank. Oh _, no._

“Hey,” Shiro said. His hand returned to Lance’s arm. “Hey, you’re okay. What’s going on?”

The next breath Lance took caught on a sob and Shiro leaned in just a bit closer. Lance gave a little shrug, which he quickly aborted with a wince before he settled back against the wall.

“‘M okay,” Lance said, voice shaking. “Just got over…whelmed?”

“Overwhelmed?”

Lance nodded, his bottom lip quivering just slightly. “Yeah. Like…n-nerves, or. Yeah?”

Internally, Shiro was kicking himself.

“Right,” Shiro said. “God. Right.”

Because of course Lance was overwhelmed. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. After the week they’d had, Shiro should’ve been surprised Lance had made it this long. But Shiro was reeling.

“You think it was the crowd?” Shiro said. “Or…?”

Lance hugged his stomach with loose arms and nodded. “The, um…noise, probably? Dunno. Just…too much.”

“Right. Right. Yeah,” Shiro said. “Of course. I think it was a lot for _all_ of us, buddy.”

Lance looked pained, his gaze slipping to the floor. “Yeah. No one else threw up,” he said quietly.

“Well, but you…” For a moment, all Shiro could see was the image of Lance standing in front of the healing pods, armor still dripping wet with sea water, every limb on him shaking. Over and over again, saying sorry. He’s sorry. He’s sorry. Because Keith…

Shiro bit down on his lip and looked away, feeling hollowed out suddenly.

There were words, but he couldn’t find them.

He couldn’t find them.

A moment passed. Then, he felt the press of Lance’s shoulder against his arm. Lance sniffled. Shiro swallowed. He sank down beside Lance.

“You have had one _hell_ of a week,” Shiro said, forcing reassurance into his voice. “And you’ve been killing it out there. We’re going back to the castle in a second. And you’re going to take the biggest nap ever, okay? God knows we could all use one of those.”

Lance sniffled again. He nodded.

Shiro rested his hand on Lance’s head, careful not to put too much weight behind it and trigger another round of nausea.

“This isn’t on you, buddy,” Shiro said. His ribs felt tight. “You’re doing great.”

Lance leaned into the touch, eyelids drooping. Shiro swallowed again. For a split moment, the feather-soft strands of Lance’s brown hair peeking between Shiro’s fingers became black. The shoulder pressing into Shiro’s arm turned from blue to red.

Shiro’s lungs froze in his chest.

He pulled his hand away, tucking both fists in his lap.

After a moment, he muttered, “We should head back.”

* * *

They were in Hunk’s room. Shiro probably didn’t need to be there, but the looks Hunk kept shooting him made him stay. 

Lance was trying to act normal again, shadows of strain visible across his carefully blank face. He was trying to get his armor off. Hunk was already in pajamas. Shiro hadn’t been kidding about having everyone take a nap.

“Lance,” Hunk said, nearly a whine. His hands hovered in the air, making halted grabby motions. “Um, how about I…”

“I’ve got it,” Lance said, his voice just barely steady. His fingers fumbled over the clasp under his arm fruitlessly for what had to be the millionth time. Lance’s smile was nowhere close to reaching his eyes. “I…I can do this.”

A tired, stagnant part of Shiro wanted to let him, wanted to let Lance keep trying to unfasten his own armor with those shaky hands that were only getting shakier with each failed attempt, because letting Lance keep up the effort that kept amounting to nothing made time kind of stand still. Shiro could stand right where he was, leaned up against Hunk’s wall, while Lance kept trying and Hunk kept worrying and nothing at all would keep on happening. Nothing would happen and nothing would get worse. It almost felt true.

The part of Shiro that couldn’t bear to see Lance work himself into a panic won out, though. He stepped around Hunk, placing his hand on Lance’s back. Lance paused. He met Shiro’s eyes.

“Come on, buddy,” Shiro said, softly. “We’re a team.”

Lance let out a shuddering breath.

A couple seconds passed. Lance nodded.

Shiro kept his hand under Lance’s elbow as Hunk undid the clasps and pulled away the armor like he was scared Lance was going to change his mind. Lance winced a couple times and Shiro thought about reminding Hunk that Lance had vomited earlier and being jostled probably wasn’t feeling good, but the armor was already off before Shiro could open his mouth.

Lance was wearing a white tee and boxers under the armor. Hunk made a move for the tee, which was admittedly just about sweated through, but Lance brushed him off, shaking his head. His blank face was looking more strained than blank now.

Without a word, Lance sank into Hunk’s bed, curling in the blankets, on his side, facing the wall. Shiro could just barely catch a look at his face from where he stood, but what he did see was bone-deep exhaustion. Even lying down with his eyes closed Lance looked like he needed several long naps. Shiro wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Lance look this tired.

It couldn’t have been more than two seconds before Lance’s breaths turned long and soft with sleep. It was like getting Lance to stop trying with the armor had gotten him to stop trying in general and he couldn’t even keep himself awake.

This time, when Hunk met Shiro’s eyes, it wasn’t a pleading look. It was a conflicted one. Hunk’s eyes darted to their feet and it clicked.

“Oh,” Shiro said quietly. He stooped down to gather Lance’s discarded armor, along with its lingering smell of stomach acid and sweat. It was still warm with body heat. Shiro transferred it entirely to his prosthetic arm because holding warm, vomit-smelling armor with his flesh hand seemed slightly worse in his mind. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of this. You good with him?”

The conflicted look dissipated from Hunk’s face. He nodded and gave Shiro a smile that was surprisingly warm with relief. Shiro found himself smiling back, like a reflex. It was hard not to smile back at Hunk. Even their current situation couldn’t make that go away entirely.

Hunk was tucked up in bed with an arm curled protectively around Lance by the time Shiro was leaving the room. Shiro dimmed the lights on his way out, breathing a deep, steadying sigh as the door slid shut behind him. He felt spent, like his heart had been taken from him and dragged across asphalt before being given back. He didn’t have enough left inside of him. It was painful but at the same time it was hard to feel.

It wasn’t even lunch yet.

“How is he?” Allura said.

Shiro jumped in his skin, clutching hard to Lance’s armor to keep from dropping it. Allura was standing just a few feet down the hall from him, her eyes a little wide like she was surprised she’d surprised him. He hadn’t heard her coming. She must’ve already been waiting there, he just hadn’t noticed. How had that happened?

“Sorry,” Allura said.

Shiro shook his head, recovered. “The crowd panicked him. It’s okay now. Hunk’s got him. They’re napping.”

Allura’s face fell to something more somber, her eyes cast to the side. Lance wasn’t the type to get spooked by a crowd any normal day. Shiro was pretty sure Allura knew that.

“I see,” she said.

There was a heaviness in the air. Allura understood as much as anyone could how horrific this was, pushing their team to keep going like everything hadn’t already fallen apart, knowing they had no other choice. Keeping up appearances was everything right now. They had to. They just had to.

Shiro spoke, feeling empty, like they weren’t even his words. “Maybe we can get through tomorrow’s show without him. Sub Matt in, or…I don’t know. Figure something out.”

“I think everyone is in need of a break,” Allura said.

The resignation in her tone, though, told Shiro she was acknowledging the need for rest more than the possibility of it.

The sound of someone clearing their throat came from down the hall. Shiro looked up and saw Coran was watching them.

“Excuse me,” Coran said. “Hate to interrupt. I was wondering if I could borrow Number One for a moment. Bit of heavy lifting involved, if you don’t mind.”

Coran accented this with a careful palm to his lower back and Shiro managed a smile.

“Be right with you, Coran,” Shiro said.

Allura caught Shiro’s eye. “I’ll keep thinking on it, Shiro. Thank you for updating me.”

Shiro nodded.

He didn’t let himself expect much, though.

* * *

In terms of handling injuries, the healing pods had been the go-to since Shiro and the others had become defenders of the universe. With technology so effective, so advanced like that, it had been easy to believe that the pods were all there was. There didn’t need to be anything else. But Shiro guessed that had been short-sighted, looking back. 

A castle this big with so many empty rooms, enough to occupy hundreds of people, which it had, once upon a time; it stood to reason that a percentage of those people would have had disabilities, that some of them would have had needs that fell outside of a healing-pod’s purposes.

The heavy lifting Coran had needed Shiro for turned out to be boxes of equipment, medical or otherwise, for “occupants with alternative needs,” Coran said. There were too many boxes to count. After bringing them out of storage closets and into the infirmary, Shiro found himself assisting with the unpacking as well.

They’d been at it about an hour.

“This will help him breathe?” Shiro said, the words spoken casually, though he knew Coran probably wasn’t fooled. He handed a rubbery face mask attached to thick tubing into Coran’s waiting hands.

Coran set the pieces beside a small, pale pink sphere on the metal shelves in front of him. He fastened the end of the tubing to a port in the sphere with a few firm cranks.

“Should he need it, yes,” Coran said, eyeing the pink machine. “This one keeps the air pressure around the nose high so that oxygen makes it to the lungs consistently.” Coran gestured to a larger machine on the floor with with much more tubing and crystals beneath transparent panels. “And then there are other, more invasive options should he need them. He may need none of it. We’ll see.”

Shiro passed Coran a heavy package, the outside illustrated with humanoid creatures, smiling with deep wrinkles in their gray-green faces. Coran set those on the bottom shelf beside the Altean versions of what Shiro was pretty sure were catheters and rubber gloves.

“Think he’ll _need_ help?” Shiro said, holding out a stack of white medical suits.

“Only time will tell,” Coran said, reaching for them.

Shiro clung to the med suits at the last moment as Coran moved to pull them away, effectively stopping Coran where he was. Coran blinked.

“Coran,” Shiro said. His throat felt tight. He forced the words forward and out of his mouth. “Do _you_ think he’ll need the help?”

Coran’s orange brows pushed together. His gaze shifted to the pods. Keith’s pod.

“I think he may, Shiro,” Coran said. His eyes became heavy. “The most recent data would indicate he’s been breathing on his own, but it’s not consistent yet. Sometimes he stops. That could change before it’s time for him to come out, though. We’ll see. It may not be that he can’t do it. It may just be that he’s tired.”

Shiro released his grip on the med suits.

He didn’t mean to be difficult. He knew Coran only had so many answers to give, and this was clearly wearing on Coran, too. The reality. The possibilities. Spoken and unspoken.

There was a conversation they hadn’t had yet. It was a conversation Shiro didn’t want to have. He was pretty sure Coran didn’t want to have it either and that Coran was putting it off until they knew for sure how bad the damage was. Because, depending on how bad the damage was, Keith…

Keith might be better off elsewhere.

Keith might _need_ to be elsewhere.

Shiro continued to help shelve things for easier access. Helped in silence. He didn’t let his eyes drift up to the image of Keith floating in that pod. He tried to absorb the realities in front of him, tried to make himself comfortable with what every piece of medical equipment Coran shelved implied. Tried to be okay with the mental image of that rubbery mask and thick tubing connected to a fragile version of Keith, pushing the air into his lungs because he couldn’t do it for himself anymore.

“Shiro,” Coran said. “Do we need to stop, my boy?”

Shiro’s fingers flinched around a can of powder.

Coran had already explained this one. Dehydrated nutrition. It was to be dissolved into water and fed into a patient’s stomach through a tube should the person be incapable of eating manually.

Shiro cleared his throat and straightened a little, shaking his head. He handed over the can.

None of this was just going to stop.

He changed the subject to something else, something more manageable.

“What’s the latest on the Olkari?” Shiro said. “Has Allura come to a decision on that?”

Getting Voltron back to working condition was top priority, regardless of the fact that nearly everything _felt_ trivial right now. Matt, Hunk, and Pidge had been working to come up with a way to keep up appearances while the Black Lion was down, but the universe would notice its absence eventually.

Pidge had suggested days ago that the Olkari be involved in trying to rebuild Black and, as far as Shiro had last heard, Allura was still coming to a decision as to whether involving more people was a good idea. The more people they involved, the quicker their circumstances were likely to spread, and they were on borrowed time as it was.

“It’s tricky with the Olkari,” Coran said. “Our alliance with their people is strong and they’ve helped us with sensitive matters in the past, but circumstances now are different than they ever have been. And it’s important to remember that the planet Olkarion was convinced to join us through the presence of Voltron. There’s no guarantee their response to news of the Black Lion’s destruction would be favorable across the board. These are people who’ve known the cruelty of the Galra Empire and could _understandably_ panic should it seem things are falling apart on our end. In my opinion, it would be wiser for us to ask for help from someone like Slav right now. Our odds of word getting out and panic ensuing are significantly less if we limit the spread to one person. I’ve told Princess Allura as much. The final decision is hers, though.”

Shiro snorted, but his insides were recoiling. “Isn’t Slav kind of the _incarnation_ of panic?”

Coran’s mouth twitched into something of a smile. “That he is. I suppose I meant he would be easier to contain, should the need arise. I’m not sure panic is something we should expect to bypass in any case.”

Shiro nodded stiffly and handed Coran more things to shelve. His mind was screaming.

They discussed other things after that. Mostly different options should a distress call for Voltron be made anytime soon. It was a conversation they’d had several times already, but Shiro didn’t mind the repetition. At least for this they could come up with solutions.

Shiro stayed and shelved until there wasn’t anything left to stay and shelve. Coran turned from the stacks of medical supplies and stretched like he’d just got up from a good sleep.

At the other end of the infirmary, right where Shiro had left it in a crumpled pile next to the door, was Lance’s armor. For a moment, he just stared at it.

“If that’s it,” Shiro said, “I’ve got some laundry I need to do.”

Coran put his hand on Shiro’s arm. “How about you let me take care of it? Pay you back for all your help. You haven’t sat down since you got back this morning, have you?”

Shiro thought of sitting down. Sitting still. He found himself tensing.

“No, thank you,” he answered too quickly. “I…”

Coran raised his eyebrows. Shiro let out a long breath, shoulders sinking.

“Sorry, Coran,” he said. “Can I do it? I really just…need something to do.”

Coran’s expression was sympathetic. He squeezed Shiro’s arm.

“Of course,” Coran said. “You do what you need to do.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Shiro honestly regretted not taking Coran up on his laundry offer. It had seemed so simple at the time, but now that he was actually down in the oddly cramped little room with its _one_ machine and its Altean-only symbols on its weird little touchscreen, Shiro had become painfully aware of the fact that since boarding the castle-ship, he had not done his own laundry once.

Part of Shiro clung to the idea that he was an adult, that real adults did their own laundry, right? That real adults didn’t have to ask for help using a washing machine. Real adults inherently knew, whether they understood the language the instructions were written in or not.

Another part of Shiro, though, had seen enough movies to have an idea of just how badly trying to use a washing machine without knowing how to use a washing machine could screw stuff up. Maybe the scenes of actors knee-deep in detergent suds were exaggerated, though. Maybe that didn’t actually ever happen.

If he were honest, the idea of just getting the armor taken care of and behind him was starting to pull at his better judgement. The room was small and somehow that made it seem stuffy, even though stuffiness was impossible thanks to the castle-ship and its very precise indoor climate control. How badly could he really mess this up?

Shiro caught the sound of footsteps behind him.

He turned to see Matt just outside the door. Shiro hadn’t bothered closing it behind him. In Matt’s arms was a large lumpy garbage bag full of probably laundry since Matt was coming into the laundry room now. He was smiling at Shiro, but his eyes were tired. The garbage bag he was carrying was giving off a sharp smell that made the room feel even stuffier than before.

“Hey,” Shiro said, eyeing the bag. “Was Lance sick again?”

“Hm?” Matt said. “Not that I know of. Pidge’s migraine caught up with her. I got it covered.”

Oh. Oh, _crap_.

“She was sick?” Shiro said.

“Yeah, it’s just the migraine. She’s fine, Shiro. Please don’t freak out.”

Shiro just shook his head.

“Shiro,” Matt said.

“I should’ve checked on you guys. I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted.”

“That’s…” Matt said, “understandable, Shiro.”

Matt’s tone was on the edge of pity. It made Shiro pause.

“Hey,” Matt said, brightening abruptly. He came around to stand in front of the machine with Shiro. “Want some pointers? Not to brag, but I know my way around space laundry. You might even call me an expert.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Shiro huffed a laugh. “Brag away. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Matt grinned and rolled back his shoulders. “Gotcha covered! Have no fear. The Laundra- _Matt_ is here.” Matt’s grin widened.

The joke sank in and Shiro groaned.

“Sorry, Shiro,” Matt said. “Pun-life chose me.”

Matt didn’t even bother with the touchscreen. Instead, he reached down to the side of the machine and cranked a dial Shiro hadn’t even realized was there. The top of the boxy machine disintegrated like a healing pod releasing its patient.

Matt set his garbage bag on the floor and put his hand out for Lance’s armor.

“Oh,” Shiro said. “No, you go first. I just assumed everything was going in together.”

Matt laughed like that idea was ridiculous.

“Actually, it’s easier this way,” Matt said. “Armor’s gonna take way less time to zap than Pidge’s civilian clothes. We’re talking seconds versus minutes. It’s similar to how our machines on earth tend to take longer with the delicates cycles, except, in this case, we’re dealing with the difference between cotton and semi-indestructible quintessence-infused materials. Pretty cool, right?”

“Um, sure?”

“Trust me. It’s very cool.”

Shiro surrendered Lance’s armor over. “If you say so.”

“I do say s—OH MY GOD!”

Lance’s armor clattered to the floor. Shiro jumped back instinctively.

“What?” Shiro said. “What’s wrong? Matt, talk to me!”

Matt was shaking his hands out. “What do you mean, _what’s wrong?_ How have you just been holding that?”

“Holding what? Is…” Shiro eyed the armor on the ground. “Is something _on_ it?”

Matt blinked at him, hands gone limp mid-flap. “Oh. You didn’t feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“It’s hot,” Matt said. “Like, my grandma’s curling iron hot.”

“It is?” Shiro looked down at the armor again. He reached out his flesh hand.

Matt caught his wrist. “Well, don’t touch it!”

“That hot?”

“Yeah.” Matt showed him his hands. The fingertips were pinkish, like he’d touched a hot pan. “Were you just using your prosthetic this whole time?”

Shiro nodded. “There was puke on it. Touching it with my skin seemed unpleasant.”

“Well, can’t fault you there. Don’t worry about it. Pidge and Keith’s armor did the same thing after the explosion. It’s a quick fix.”

Shiro stilled at that.

Right. Along with the explosion’s warped quintessence weakening the Lions, Pidge’s and Keith’s armor had been effected too. It had been obvious. Their armor had been completely dark.

Coran had tried to do repairs manually and gotten their armor to power back up, but immediately after, the armor had begun overheating. Coran had come to the conclusion that the armor’s material had been weakened similarly to the Lions and was overheating because it was having to work harder to support usual functions. It really had been a quick fix once Coran figured that out. The red and green armor were both back to normal after a cycle through a reset chamber. Shiro hadn’t thought about it since. Everything had been chaos that day. A couple pairs of armor overheating hadn’t seemed important. It _hadn’t_ been important. Shiro only knew about it because he’d been in the room when it happened.

Now, though. Now, it sent a shiver through him. Now, it was terrifying, because Lance’s armor hadn’t been dark. It hadn’t even flashed an indicator that anything was wrong. A week since the explosion and Lance had been wearing that weakened armor assuming it was as effective as it ever had been.

Thank God for Coran’s shows. Thank God for Voltron on Ice. If Lance had gone into battle in that armor instead of performing those fucking shows, there was a steady chance he’d be dead. Thank fucking God.

Shiro left it to Matt to figure out the laundry and the armor. Matt had a better handle on it anyway and assured him of as much. Shiro left quickly. He felt ill.

Amidst the detached sense of hollowed out pain Shiro had been feeling little else besides for the past week, a sharp, overwhelming dread was quickly filling every available space.

Everyone was fine. Everyone was obviously fine. Stressed and spent, but fine. It had been a week. If anyone wasn’t fine, they’d have known it by now. Keith was the only one who wasn’t fine.

But Lance’s armor was overheating and, next to that, reason didn’t seem to matter anymore. All sense of security was gone. Lance’s armor was broken and they hadn’t even known it.

Shiro slipped into his bedroom and sank against the door as it sealed shut behind him. He hugged his knees, fingers digging into his shins, forehead pressing his kneecaps. His eyelids felt stretched around his eyes. His eyes felt cold. His chest was too tight to get a full breath, but, for the life of him, Shiro couldn’t uncurl to give his lungs more space.

_Keith had been drowning—_

_And Shiro hadn’t even known it._

Shiro heard himself make a noise; a small, choked whine.

He ground his teeth together, tremors running though his body.

Another noise, thin and whiny and muffled by his teeth.

Shiro closed his eyes so tight he saw spots. It didn’t even feel like his voice or his body or his breaths anymore. It didn’t even feel like his mind.

It rolled over and through him. There was no other choice.

A nebulous amount of time passed.

When it was over, his head ached and his body felt like lead.

But he could take a full breath.

He uncurled, leaned back against his door, hands limp at his sides. He breathed. His face was wet beneath his eyes. Gravity pulled the moisture down his jaw to drip from his chin and seep into his collar. Shiro wanted to sleep.

So he closed his eyes and let exhaustion take him.

* * *

He woke up hungry.

There was a bad crick in his neck from napping against the door. His head throbbed. Slowly, he stood, reaching up above his head carefully to stretch. His back popped in two places. His head hurt worse. His stomach burned.

Shiro was pretty sure he’d slept through lunch.

He made his way to the communal bathrooms, which were just down the hall. The large tiled room was empty besides him, which Shiro decided was lucky after catching his reflection in the mirror. He washed his face several times with cold water and combed his hair. There wasn’t much else he could do.

He entered the kitchen to find Hunk drying dishes. Hunk caught his eye and put on a smile that didn’t look quite real.

“Hey, Shiro,” Hunk said. “Leftovers in the fridge.”

“You cooked,” Shiro said, and realized a second later how obvious that was. Hunk wouldn’t have been drying pots and pans otherwise.

Hunk brightened, though, like it was a perfectly reasonable observation to be making. “Yeah! I figured, why not? I had the time, and it was feeling more like a soup day than a food goo day, so…”

Soup. Shiro pulled a bowl covered in cling film out from the fridge. Soup actually didn’t sound bad.

“Looks nice,” Shiro said. “Um…Noodle-y.”

Hunk took the bowl from him and stuck it in the reheater. “If I’d known it was gonna be a hit, I would’ve made more.” Hunk chuckled to himself. “Pidge ate, like, five bowls. It was kind of terrifying.”

Shiro frowned. “Matt said she threw up earlier.”

“Yeah. It didn’t slow her down.”

“Hm,” Shiro said. “What about Lance? Was he able to eat?”

Hunk’s smile faded. The reheater chimed and Hunk set Shiro’s soup on the bar. “Actually,” Hunk said, “Lance wasn’t really up for lunch.”

Shiro folded his arms and sighed. He’d sort of expected as much, but it wasn’t great news. “Where is he now?”

To this, Hunk looked unsettled, and that was not expected.

“Um,” Hunk said. “I’m not sure? He…he kind of left before I woke up. He left a note, though! He didn’t want me to freak out. But he said he needed some alone time. He told me not to bother getting him for lunch.”

That made Shiro nervous. Lance wasn’t in too bad a spot, as far as Shiro could tell, but after that morning’s episode, he wasn’t sure he was okay with Lance wandering the Castle alone.

“Uh,” Hunk said. “I think your soups a good temperature, if you want it.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks,” Shiro said, and made to sit down. He hesitated, though. After a moment, he straightened and backed away from the bar. “Sorry, would you mind keeping it for me? There’s something I need to do.”

“Oh,” Hunk said, maybe a little disappointed. “Okay?”

Shiro put his hand on Hunk’s shoulder. “It smells awesome, Hunk. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Hunk nodded. “Okay.”

Shiro took off down the hall, going at a brisk walk. There was no way to be sure where Lance was, but there were some frequented spots Shiro could check first. Most likely, Lance was in his room, playing video games in his pajamas.

* * *

It was nearly an hour later when Shiro found him.

By then, the entire Castle was looking.

Shiro’s heart was in his throat. His soup had been left to spoil on the bar.

* * *

He found Lance laying in the tall grass, Kaltenecker’s big head resting on Lance’s chest. 

This room was one of the first Shiro had checked, but he hadn’t looked hard enough. Lance was wearing his jacket over his white tee and boxers and it blended with the grass and hay. The way Kaltenecker was curled beside him, he was barely visible from the door.

Lance’s hands were fisted in the fur behind the cow’s fluffy ears like a child clinging to their mother’s shirt. His red-rimmed eyes were wide, staring nearly unblinking up at the tall ceiling. Sweat beaded on his forehead and tears rolled into his ears. He held his lip between his teeth and shuddered every breath.

At first, Shiro was sure Lance was panicking again.

Shiro dropped beside him. “Lance! What’s wrong? Buddy, say something.”

Lance made a little gasping noise, his eyes shifting to Shiro. His features contorted. Pain. That was pain. Lance was in pain.

Shiro did his best to stay calm.

“Does it hurt?” Shiro asked.

Lance made another gasping noise and nodded.

Shiro rested his palm over Lance’s forehead. “Where, Lance? Where does it hurt? Is it the cow?”

A rush of panic shot through Shiro at the thought. Lance loved the cow and Shiro was pretty sure Lance was the only person the cow loved back. Animals forgot how big they were all the time, didn’t they? Kaltenecker wouldn’t know to be gentle. Wouldn’t know how easily human ribs could break under the force of…

But Lance shook his head, clinging tighter to the cow’s neck like Shiro making her leave was the worst thing that could possibly happen. Kaltenecker snuffled pleasantly and licked Lance’s chin, keeping her head where it was.

“C-can’t,” Lance choked, “move m’ legs.”

“Your,” Shiro said, “…legs?”

Lance didn’t answer.

Somewhere down the hall, Shiro could hear Pidge’s voice calling.

“In here!” Shiro shouted. “He’s in here!”

“Shiro?” muttered Lance. He sounded so scared.

Shiro laced his fingers through Lance’s hair, pushing it from his face. “It’s okay, buddy. Help’s coming. We’re gonna help you. Can you tell me what happened? Where does it hurt? Did you fall?”

Lance’s eyes darted around frantically and Shiro realized he’d asked him too many questions. Shiro was about to narrow it down when Pidge came through the door.

“Shiro?” she said, breathless. “He okay? Lance?”

“Get Coran,” Shiro said, and he did a pretty crap job of sounding calm this time. “Now!”

“ _Shit_ ,” she said, and he heard her feet pounding as she ran back the way she’d come.

Lance made another gasping noise.

* * *

Coran showed up soon after.

The first thing he did was get the cow to give Lance space. Lance looked like he was about to lose it. Shiro put his hand on Lance’s arm in case Lance tried to fight. Lance grabbed Shiro’s hand and held Shiro’s fingers so tight it hurt. Shiro squeezed gently back.

“He…” Shiro said. “He said his legs. He can’t move them. He said it hurts.”

“It hurts, my boy?” Coran said, eyeing Lance way too calmly. “I’m dreadfully sorry to hear that. Let’s see what we can do to get you sorted, hm?”

Discreetly, Coran lifted the hem of Lance’s tee just a few inches. With Kaltenecker out of the way, Lance’s awkward way of laying was visible. His body was twisted, like he’d dropped rather than laid there on purpose. His shirt and jacket had shrugged up above his middle on one side, and the weird way his body had turned made it possible to see some of Lance’s back without having to move him.

Coran took a sharp breath.

Shiro could see it from where he sat. The skin along Lance’s spine was mottled with dark purple and red, fading yellow-green at the edges. It looked like bruises, but Shiro couldn’t remember ever seeing bruises quite that vibrant. It looked like someone had painted Lance’s skin.

Lance whimpered.

“Right,” Coran said, gently resting Lance’s shirt back into place. “Let’s get you a stretcher, dear boy. You’ll be much more comfortable being transported on one of those, I think.”

Footsteps shuffled away; Matt’s footsteps. He was getting the stretcher. Coran was staying right here. Shiro heard a soft beeping noise and realized Coran was doing a portable scan. Lance was clinging to Shiro with both hands.

“How long has it been hurting, Lance?” Coran asked while they waited.

And that struck Shiro as wrong. Why was ‘how long’ a question?

But then it made sense.

Because those bruises. They weren’t brand new. The color was wrong. Those bruises were days old.

Lance shook his head, eyes locked with Shiro’s. “I…I got sore. A-after the mission? I’m always sore after…after the bad ones.”

After the mission.

The _mission?_

Oh, God.

Oh, God, oh God oh _God_ …

“Right,” Coran said. “So, after the explosion?”

 _No, no, no_ …

Lance’s breath hitched. “That…that mission was _shit_.”

 _Please, no_ …

“That is was,” Coran said. “And you’ve been sore ever since? Since the blast?”

Lance shook his head. “No. No, I was _fine_. I didn’t g-get hurt. The blast got K-Keith…and…and I was _fine_. I pulled him out. I was fine. I j-just…I got…I got bumped…when…when Black g-got ripped in half b-but I…”

Shiro rubbed Lance’s hands with his thumb. “Breathe, buddy.” It was a plea.

Lance took a stuttering breath.

“You got bumped?” Coran said.

Lance shook his head. “I w-was wearing my armor. I was _fine_.”

The mission.

His _armor_.

Lance’s armor that had been weakened by the explosion…

Shiro felt sick.

“They j-just,” Lance said. “They just stopped…working. My…my _legs_. I was _fine_.”

“All right,” Coran said, patting Lance’s arm. “That’s all right. That’s very helpful, Lance. No need to worry. We’re going to have you feeling better in just a tick.”

“I swear I was okay,” Lance said.

“I believe you,” Coran said, but his expression was grim.

* * *

Shiro stayed with Lance even as the pod sealed, only releasing Lance’s hand at the last moment. 

Coran gripped Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro was shaking.

“He’s badly bruised,” Coran said. “And it’s been worsening the longer its been left untreated. It’s been putting pressure on his spine for I can only imagine how long, but nothing is broken. There’s a good chance we caught it in time.”

For a while, Shiro couldn’t speak.

“That happened,” Shiro said, “while he was pulling Keith out?”

Upon closer inspection, the bruises had formed the warped shape of a dashboard’s edge.

“It seems likely,” Coran said.

Lance was in a pod beside Keith’s. Both were in the throws of synthetic sleep. Lance’s brow was pinched like he’d fallen straight into a bad dream. Keith’s expression was slack and dead like it had been since he’d been put in.

From behind, Shiro could hear Hunk sniffling.

There were footsteps. Pidge’s tiny hands gripped Shiro’s flesh fingers.

“Shiro,” she said, voice thin.

Shiro swallowed. He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the two pods in front of him. Carefully, he pulled from Pidge’s grip. He shrugged away from Coran.

“Excuse me,” Shiro said, and it barely sounded like him. “There’s something I…excuse me.”

* * *

Shiro hadn’t gone into the Black Lion’s hangar since before the explosion. Hadn’t looked at the Black Lion since it had been ripped to pieces. Hadn’t visited it since Keith had nearly drowned jammed in its cockpit.

He strode through the hangar door without looking back or from side to side, his gaze locked with the Black Lion’s lifeless yellow eyes. The door sliced closed behind him. Shiro’s heart pounded in his ears.

His voice shook as he spoke. “Where were you?”

The words echoed off the walls.

The room fell eerily silent.

Shiro felt like he was burning.

“You were supposed to protect them!” he said. “You were supposed to protect them, so where the hell were you? Huh?” His feet took him forward. His hands clenched. “He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t _breathe!_ He couldn’t fucking breathe!”

Shiro was right in its face now. He was right in its lifeless yellow eye.

“Where the hell were you? They _needed_ you! You _hurt_ them! THEY _NEEDED_ YOU AND YOU _ABANDONED THEM!_ ”

It echoed, clanging off the walls, reverberating through Shiro’s bones. His breaths tore through his lungs.

His legs wobbled.

His knees were suddenly taffy, too weak to hold him up. They buckled, hitting the floor hard, shooting pain through his femurs and shins and feet. Shiro hugged his stomach. He felt sick. He felt dizzy. He felt like his chest was breaking open.

His head bowed forward. His forehead pressed against the Black Lion’s cool metal. He didn’t want to touch it. He didn’t want to be anywhere close. But he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t hold himself up. Sweat pooled down his face.

“Useless,” Shiro’s mouth formed. “Useless. Where _were_ you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'll be honest. I tried really hard not to write this from Shiro's pov. Mostly because Shiro's pov was hard for me at first, lol, but also because I knew it would probably be more depressing than other pov's. And it was. It had to happen, though. This chapter really did have to be Shiro's pov. Because, full disclosure here, after this chapter, we're not gonna see a ton of Shiro for a while. And the story needed to have a good fleshing out as to why that might be. So, that's why this chapter was the way it was. The rest of this fic is gonna be more balanced in terms of hurt-to-comfort ratios. This chapter was just different. I really hope it was okay.


	4. Sum of Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is released from the pod and reality becomes harder to avoid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'll be upfront and say this chapter is pretty angsty. I thought about making it less so, but in the end, it kind of needed to be this way. I've made a couple additions to the tags, so please read with caution. Please let me know if there's something I need to add in the tags. I'm seriously just taking my best guess with what should be up there and hoping I'm getting everything.
> 
> Thank you to all you guys who commented last chapter! Thanks to everyone still reading! I'm sorry the past couple chapters took me actual months to get out. Depression is a real jerk. I hope to update more regularly from here. I mean, famous last words, but the intention is there :)

Coran tapped into a panel beside Keith’s pod, explaining matter-of-factly, “Well, of course there’s a failsafe. A cryo-replenisher isn’t ever going to release someone who wouldn’t survive outside of it. That would be dangerous!”

Lance forced a smile. Reflexive. Coran wasn’t looking at him, though, so he let his expression slacken. His hands balled up in his lap.

“I get that,” Lance said. “He just…you’re sure he’s not getting better?”

“Oh, he could always get better,” Coran said. “There’s always the chance of improvement. He’s just not going to get any better in here.”

There was a tall infirmary bed in the middle of the room. Coran had installed it in front of the pods yesterday in preparation for this moment. Lance was seated at the bed’s side, part of the frame digging into his knees from tucking himself so close.

The pod let out a harsh buzzing sound, like it was audibly protesting them taking Keith out the way he was. But there was a click, and then a hiss as Coran opened it anyway. Lance found himself looking away as cool steam began to pool out of the pod.

His eyes locked on some shelves.

They were metal, new to the room just like the bed, stacked with more machines and medical-looking things than Lance cared to catalogue. Instead, he let his focus dart from object to object, gaze never settling long enough to get more than a basic idea of the shape and color before moving on.

Lance slipped his hand beneath his collar. His fingers fidgeted against the slightly tougher patches of skin on his shoulders, his nails biting against the old scars.

When Lance looked up, Keith was in Coran’s arms.

Lance froze.

Keith’s face was tucked against Coran’s shoulder, haphazard, like his head had just happened to land that way. His hands were pale, grayish, just a shade from the med-suit he still wore. His legs and arms dangled, jiggled by Coran’s steps. Keith looked like a kid who’d fallen asleep in the car on the way home and now Coran was trying to get him inside without waking him. Lance’s stomach bottomed out.

The room rang with silence.

Coran leaned over the bed to set Keith down, and Keith sagged into the mattress, doll-like.

His nose and mouth were already obscured by the pale blue mask and silver tube Coran had connected to his airways. He still wasn’t breathing well enough on his own. His eyes were open, though. Open for the first time in two weeks. They stared emptily up at the ceiling; awake, but, from all Lance could tell, unaware.

“There we go,” Coran said. “Good, good.”

The words were simple, but something about them had Lance reaching forward through the bedrail to wrap a hand around Keith’s icy fingers.

“We’re good,” Lance agreed softly.

Coran continued to work at Keith’s other side. More machines. More tubes. Keith’s head lolled toward Lance when Coran shifted his body at one point. Keith didn’t seem to care one way or the other, though. He kept staring straight ahead, straight through Lance like he wasn’t even there. The only sign he was even alive, really, was when several moments later, he blinked.

“We’re here, Keith,” Lance whispered.

But that felt like a lie.

The only person who really mattered wasn’t here.

Lance’s hand tightened around Keith’s.

Not like it was Shiro’s fault. There’d been an emergency with the Blade. He’d had to go. He and the others had already been gone when Lance had gotten out of the pod three days before. Team Voltron was down so many people and resources right now. Keith would’ve understood that. Out of everyone, Lance knew _Keith_ would’ve understood their need to prioritize.

But that just…

That just made it all feel _worse_.

Lance gripped the front of his shirt in his free fist and tugged it from his chest, like he could pull the feelings out that way. But nothing happened. He just ached, plus now his chest was cold.

Lance looked up again just in time to see Coran push a needle into Keith’s arm through a slot in the med-suit. Keith didn’t even flinch.

“It’s likely,” Coran said, “that he can hear us. He is awake. See?” Coran pushed Keith’s bangs from his eyes, as if to make it more obvious that they were open. “The scanners picked up a fair amount of brain activity during his stay in the pod. He’s with us.”

Slowly, Keith blinked again.

“If you’d care to talk to him,” Coran said, “it is likely that he’s listening.”

Lance swallowed.

Coran turned back to the machines. Lance met Keith’s vacant stare. Keith’s head was still lolled toward him.

“Um, so,” Lance started quietly. He was right next to him. He didn’t need to be loud. “Hi.”

God.

What was he supposed to say?

“You,” Lance began. “You may have noticed. Shiro’s not here right now. Neither are Hunk or Allura. Or Matt.” Lance bit his lip. “Well, Pidge either, I guess. She’s here, in the Castle. But she’s not _here_ , here. Not in the room. She didn’t, um.”

Pidge hadn’t wanted to be in the room for this part. Lance got stuck on that for a second. He didn’t feel like he should say it.

“Pidge hasn’t been feeling good,” he chose instead. “Everyone else, though. They’re on a mission. They’ll be back soon.” Lance paused. “I think. They’ve been gone for, like, a week at this point? So it probably won’t be a lot longer.”

Lance met Coran’s eyes, and Coran gave him a small smile that actually looked forced. They hadn’t been in contact with the team since they’d gone, and Lance knew that stressed Coran out.

“But…” Lance said, turning back to Keith. “But we’ll keep you company until then, so…um. Don’t worry. I don’t know if you _were_ worried.” Lance swallowed, fumbling with Keith’s fingers. “I know I’d be worried. I’d…I’d miss them.”

Well, that was an understatement.

Lance had been a _wreck_ when he’d gotten out of the pod and Hunk hadn’t been there with a hug ready.

Or even a hug on standby.

“I, um,” Lance said. “I keep thinking about. Um.”

Lance twisted his hand in the front of his shirt.

“I keep thinking,” he tried again. “About the things we said to each other. Before…before the mission? It was, like…our last _real_ conversation, I guess. Before…” Lance hesitated. “Before now.”

Keith did another slow blink.

“You were worried about me,” Lance said, recalling Keith’s careful glances and his awkwardly spoken suggestion to limit the killing at the base for the sake of Lance’s conscience. “You were worried, because I was freaking out about the mission, remember? And I teased you about it. I teased you for worrying about me. I called you a softie, like that’s a bad thing.” Lance frowned. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was trying to lighten the mood, but I went about it wrong. You shouldn’t ever feel embarrassed for worrying about someone. And I bet you took it that way, knowing you.”

Lance rested a tentative hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“It’s not like I’m gonna stop teasing you, dude,” Lance said. “But I’m not gonna tease you for caring, anymore. I hope you can hear me. Because I really need you to know that.”

For a while, Lance stayed like that, with his hand on Keith’s shoulder where he could feel the rise and fall of every long breath. Keith’s eyes continued to stare through Lance, dark and unshifting.

“I’m gonna be here,” Lance said, quieter. “I’m gonna be right here for this. I need you to know that, too.”

Time ticked by.

Coran eventually finished setting up the machines.

It wasn’t as overwhelming as Lance had pictured it being. There were some tubes, but not enough that Keith was hidden beneath them. The med suit had all the sensors to keep track of Keith’s vitals. On earth, there would’ve been wires everywhere. There was the blue mask that kept the air pressure in Keith’s airways high so he continued to breathe even when he got tired and there was the IV in his arm to keep him hydrated, but nothing else was visible.

Coran tucked a soft beige blanket over Keith and pulled a chair up to the bedside, next to Lance. They sat in silence, watching as Keith’s slow blinks eventually began to stall out. After a while, Keith’s eyes finally stayed closed.

The transition was surreal. Keith’s face was just as relaxed in sleep as it had been while he was awake. It took a moment for it to sink in that he’d fallen asleep at all.

Coran had his hand on Lance’s shoulder. Very, very gentle.

“It’s lunchtime,” said Coran.

Lance looked up. More time had passed than he’d realized.

“I should go wait for Pidge,” Lance said.

“If you’re up for it,” said Coran. “If you’d prefer to stay here for now, that’s fine.”

Lance shook his head. He appreciated the offer, but Pidge had been…

It needed to be Lance.

“He’ll just be sleeping,” Lance said. “Right?”

“For a good while, I should think,” Coran said, nodding toward Keith. “I can let you know when he wakes.”

“Thanks.”

“Good lad,” said Coran. “Now. Do you need…?”

Lance cut in before Coran could ask it. “No thanks.” He backed his elbow up, shielding his seat-back a bit, to emphasize the fact that he didn’t want Coran touching it. “I don’t need help getting there. Thanks for offering, though.”

Coran nodded, and Lance appreciated that he made no other move besides that.

Lance lowered his hands to the rims at either side of his chair and attempted to wheel himself backward. His hands slid fruitlessly, his chair remaining in place.

“Ah,” said Coran. “The brakes.”

Lance’s face burned. “Yep. I noticed.”

Three days he’d been out of the pod and he was still so godawful at this. That was why he had to keep doing it, though. It was the only way he’d get better at it.

Lance released the brake on either wheel, gripping the rims tight to keep from swiveling. It was a little nuts how even flat surfaces seemed to have secret inclines you knew nothing about until you were in a wheelchair.

He tried to ignore the fact that Coran was definitely watching him and pushed himself backward toward the door, watching over his shoulder. This he could actually do semi-accurately. Forward was still a disaster. Like, a let’s-not-even-attempt-this-outside-the-training-room kind of disaster.

Lance made it out into the hall and continued until he’d backed himself against the wall directly across from the door. He reactivated his brakes, one wheel at a time. He sank back in his seat. His arms and his shoulders ached.

The door slid closed across from him.

Lance was alone.

He pulled his hands away from the rims slowly and tucked them under his armpits. He hunched forward a bit, breathing.

Okay.

He was okay.

Several minutes later, Pidge came to get him.

Lance looked up at the sound of her sock-padded footsteps. She was still in her pajamas, and her eyes were practically bruised with dark circles, but, hey. She was up.

Lance smiled. “Heya, bedhead.”

Pidge gave him a pinched frown. “Hey, yourself,” she said.

She stared at him.

Lance felt a weird tickle rise up in his throat. His chest did a little gasping thing, and for a second, he thought he might be sick. But then he ended up crying instead.

He covered his mouth, trying to stifle some of it. Pidge was there, right in front of him, leaned over with her arms tight around his shoulders. He could hear her saying something.

He sort of lost track of things for a while.

* * *

They ate their goo in Lance’s room.

He wasn’t really allowed to be alone for long periods of time yet since he was still learning how to get around, so Pidge had been staying with him. Pidge was a good person for that. She was able to be helpful in a straightforward, mostly quiet way, like it was all normal and not any kind of a big deal.

She’d been spending nights, too. She had a mattress parked on his floor covered in so many blankets and pillows you couldn’t actually see any trace of the mattress. They ate on Lance’s bed, though, since it was higher off the ground and easier for Lance to get to from his chair.

Lance had his bowl in his lap. He was using his spoon with one hand, his other hand stroking through Pidge’s tangled hair, massaging the muscles in the side of her head. She’d stopped eating a few minutes ago, opting to lean her head on his shoulder and stare at the wall. Lance was pretty sure she was fighting another headache. She didn’t usually get this randomly cuddly unless she was feeling bad.

“What’re you thinking about, Pidge?” he asked softly.

Pidge shrugged against him. She was quiet for a moment.

“Technology has finally let me down?” she said, finally.

“Yeah? How so?”

“The healing pods suck,” she said. Her voice was tight.

Lance set his spoon in his bowl. He pulled his arms around her.

“They don’t suck that much,” he said. “We’re alive.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did know.

“This really, really sucks,” Pidge said. A tremble ran through her. Her fingers tightened into one of his sleeves.

Lance rubbed her back. “I’m here, Pidge.”

Her face pressed against his arm.

Pidge had been there with Coran when the pod had released Lance three days ago. Actually, Lance was pretty sure that was the reason she’d refused to be there for Keith today. Seeing more than one friend come out of a pod not quite healed was likely more than anyone could reasonably handle within the span of one week.

“There’s something,” Pidge said, “I never really told you guys. I just…it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. It was painful. I wanted to forget it.”

Lance kept rubbing her back.

“When I went off on my own to get Matt,” she said. “I had to go a lot of places before I found him. One of the places was…a grave.”

“A grave?”

“His name was on it.”

“Oh, Pidge.” Lance tightened his arms around her, something cold gripping his insides. “Pidgey.”

“It was fake,” she said. “Obviously. But…I didn’t know that at first.”

“Jesus, Pidge.”

“It was the worst.” Her voice was thick. “I wanted to put the whole thing out of my head. But this whole thing w-with you, and with _Keith_. It’s bringing it back.”

For a while, Lance just held her, rubbing her back while she trembled and hid in his arms. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to fix any of this.

“I’m right here,” he tried, finally.

“Yeah,” Pidge said. “I know. But Keith…”

Lance bit the inside of his lip.

“I don’t know how I live with this,” Pidge said. “I didn’t even know I cared this much. I knew I loved you guys. You’re my friends. I care so much. But I didn’t…I didn’t expect it to feel like this. Not like it did with _Matt_.” She pressed a fist against her eyes. “I never wanted to feel that way again. And now it does!” She sobbed. “I may never hear Keith talk again, Lance. What if he doesn’t even know who I am? How do I do this? I don’t think I can do this.”

Lance swallowed. He didn’t know how to do this either. He wanted to remind Pidge that Keith wasn’t dead. He wasn’t gone. He could get better. But the image of Keith’s blank, unshifting stare from that hospital bed killed the words before they made it through his throat.

Lance tightened a hand around Pidge’s shoulder.

“He’s still Keith,” Lance said. “That won’t change. No matter what, he’s still gonna be Keith. And Coran says he can hear us. And we’re just gonna…we’re gonna take it a day at a time. Together. As a team.”

As a team.

That hadn’t changed.

* * *

Crying set off a bad migraine.

Pidge had pills she could take, but what they didn’t wipe out, she just had to sleep off. This was why she was here and not with the others on their mission, technically speaking. Shiro had grounded her from piloting until the headaches stopped. Completely.

Kind of hypocritical since Lance was pretty sure Shiro had headaches all the dang time, but he guessed that wasn’t the point. Pidge’s symptoms were post-concussion and they’d lasted post-pod, and he couldn’t blame Shiro for being extra careful right now. The fear made sense at this point.

According to Coran, after Lance had been put in the pod, Shiro had been out of his head worried for the others.

Because if Lance had been seriously injured without anyone realizing it, the rest of them could’ve been in the same boat. Even after Coran had done scans on everyone and they’d come up clean, Shiro had insisted everyone, even Matt, who’d been nowhere close to the exploding base, take a turn in the pods, just to be safe.

It’d been comical, the way Coran had described it, everyone lining up and going in the pods, being spit out about as soon as they’d been sealed in, one after the other, because there was nothing to heal. But Lance was pretty sure in the moment it probably hadn’t been funny at all. It had probably been horrible.

He stayed next to Pidge as she slept on his bed, his mask blindfolding her photosensitive eyes from the dim blue glow of his bedroom overheads. He was so unspeakably tired, but he couldn’t bring himself to flop over and sleep too. He just. He couldn’t even bring himself to close his eyes.

He pressed his fingertips against his thumbs, one after the other, then back the other way, over and over again. He watched his hands, felt the sting every time his fingers pressed against a blister. For as awful as he was at maneuvering his wheelchair at the moment, it wasn’t from lack of trying. His whole body was sore from all the trying. His fingers and palms were raw from all the trying.

Lance’s gaze shifted past his hands. He stared at his legs, sprawled in front of him on the bed. They could move a bit and he could still feel, but it wasn’t enough to stand or walk on.

Lance took a full breath and let it out through his lips. It fluttered his bangs from his face.

The healing pod had allowed Lance to skip the initial recovery for the spinal injury. No bedrest, no slow, nail-biting wait to see what function would be there when everything had knit itself back together. It had knit itself back together in the pod, and this was what he had left. It’d been three days. This was what Lance had left.

For…for now.

The spinal damage had been incomplete, and he’d get better with therapy. Of course he would.

Of course.

He was already moving better than he had on day one.

He stared at his legs, suddenly filled with a burning determination to prove it to himself. Right then and there. He willed his legs to bend at the knees and curl toward him.

They didn’t do it.

His right foot shifted sideways, just a bit. A twitch.

That was it.

It hit Lance suddenly that he was breathing too fast.

He tried to slow it down.

He immediately choked.

Lance folded his hands over his mouth, trying to muffle the sound of overlapping gasps and coughs. He stopped choking only for the fast breathing to pick right back up. His lungs were forcing it. He didn’t have any control.

Oh.

He was panicking.

Tears beaded from his eyes. He was going to wake Pidge up with this. God, he really needed to get it together.

He squeezed his eyes closed, curling forward, trying to keep the sound trapped in his hands.

Just do it like Shiro taught you for out in the field.

In for four. Hold it for four. Out for four.

Do it like your therapist back home.

In for seven, out eleven.

Imagine a giant rainbow bubble getting bigger and then deflating.

Fuck _._

In for four. Hold it for four. Out for four.

What colors are on the bubble? List the colors. _Blue, red, green_ …

Lance was sweaty by the time he could breathe a full breath again.

His hair was dripping with it.

He wiped his face with the inside of his shirt collar, hands trembling with exhaustion.

He didn’t try to fall asleep. It just happened.

One second he was sitting up and the next he was curled on his side, eyes too heavy to keep open any longer.

* * *

He woke to Pidge poking him.

“Lance,” she said. “Laaaance!”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” he said. His voice was hoarse. Ugh.

Pidge’s hair was sticking up in multiple directions and there were pink lines on her cheek from sleeping hard on top of a blanket crease or something. How long had they been out?

Pidge shoved a tech pad at him. “Coran tried messaging you.”

Lance pulled himself upright, grabbing the pad. “What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” Pidge said. “I’m not supposed to look at screens.”

Lance bit his lip at the number of missed messages. He’d missed seven over the course of an hour, the last five happening all within the past few minutes. Pidge probably hadn’t been able to sleep through the buzzing. He was a little surprised he had.

Lance frowned at the screen.

The first message was to tell him Keith had woken up. Then another right after to tell him to take his time and let Coran know when he was on his way. The last five were all some variation of restating for Lance to take his time with the added detail that Keith was fine.

That was…

A lot of reassurance.

“Something wrong?” Pidge said.

“I’m not sure,” Lance said. He turned the screen off and lowered it to his lap. “I want to go down there. Can you take me?”

Pidge nodded. “I’ll get your chair.”

* * *

Keith was laying on his back, propped up with pillows, staring forward with empty, red-rimmed eyes. Old tear tracks were dried to his face. 

“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you,” Coran explained. He was standing beside the head of the bed, petting Keith’s dark hair from his face at a constant rhythm. “I only asked that you let me know before you arrived so that I could prepare you. He’s all right, Lance.”

Lance clung to Keith’s hand. He knew Coran hadn’t been hiding anything. Coran didn’t do stuff like that. He didn’t blame him for this.

“Is he in pain?” Lance said.

“The worst of it is over,” Coran said.

And Lance winced, because that wasn’t a no.

While Lance had been napping, Coran had been putting a feeding tube down Keith’s nose.

It’d been necessary. The way Keith was right now, of courseeating would be an issue. Lance just hadn’t been thinking that far. He hadn’t thought of it at all.

“Was he awake for it?” Lance asked. Keith looked like he’d been awake for it.

Coran continued petting Keith’s hair. “I’m afraid he had to be, my boy. He may have aspirated, otherwise. I promise, I was as gentle as I could possibly be.”

“I know you were,” Lance said quietly.

The breathing mask over the bottom half of Keith’s face and the feeding tube taped to his cheek did little to hide the discomfort in his expression. The eyes were enough.

Keith still wasn’t focusing on anything, wasn’t looking anywhere but ahead. He was still doing those blank, slow blinks. But something about him was more expressive than it had been before. The best way Lance could think to describe it was that now he could actually tell Keith was awake.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Lance said, layering Keith’s hand in his. “That must’ve been really scary, man.”

Keith’s raw eyes blinked slowly at the wall.

Lance tried not to picture it, the mental image of Coran putting the tube in, Keith laying there, tears of pain or fear running from his eyes. He probably hadn’t even known what was happening. He wouldn’t have been able to put up a fight, wouldn’t have been able to complain. Lance wondered if he’d even known it was Coran doing it, if Keith had felt safe.

“Coran?” Lance said.

“Yes, my boy,” Coran said.

“I…” Lance took a shuddering breath. “I don’t think I can leave him again.”

For a moment, Coran was silent.

“That’s fine,” Coran said. “I’m sure Keith will appreciate your company.”

Lance wasn’t sure about that. Keith didn’t really seem to even know he was there. If he did, Lance was pretty sure Keith would’ve preferred Shiro. If Lance were honest, he was more here for himself than he was for anyone else.

* * *

Once Coran let Pidge know about Lance’s change in plans, she changed hers right along with him. Lance had kind of known she would. The way things were lately, he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to spend the night alone.

She visited Keith first, just to get the hard part over with. She’d already known how he was. Being faced with it wasn’t a surprise. It was just hard.

She and Coran were now moving mattresses into the room so that she and Lance could spend the night near Keith comfortably. Coran spoke a bit, just to direct the positioning of the beds. Pidge was completely silent, communicating everything there was to communicate with an occasional glare in Coran’s direction.

That was a thing with Pidge now. She was angry at Coran.

Lance stayed at Keith’s bedside, holding that hand while Keith continued to stare at the wall. Lance spoke to him quietly, just stupid stuff. He didn’t know if it was helping, but Coran had _told him_ Keith was listening, and if Keith was listening, how sick would it be if no one talked to him?

“So, that’s the main difference between garlic knots and garlic bread,” Lance said. “I mean, they’re essentially totally different foods, but some people need an explanation, so I guess I kind of have one prepared at this point? It’s weird how many times I’ve had that conversation. Enough times that I have a whole argument prepared. Do I really talk about garlic knots that much? I don’t think I do. But, then, how does it keep getting brought up?”

Keith’s eyes blinked slowly.

“I…” Lance said. “Uh, I don’t know if you care.”

Lance grimaced. Maybe it was cruel, actually, talking about food right after Keith had been intubated because eating manually wasn’t something he was capable of. Quiznak.

“Uh, sorry, buddy,” Lance said. He pulled his tablet out from where he’d tucked it next to his leg. “How about I read to you for a while? My stories are probably getting old.”

A slow blink.

Lance picked, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, out of all the different book files on his device.

Every bit of reading material he’d happened to bring with him to space had been required reading for Garrison classes. Most of it was boring, but some of the novels didn’t actually suck.

His mom had read this one to him before, back when he was a kid.

He remembered her sitting on the edge of his bed, the way she’d do different voices, her arm around him, hugging him against her every time she had to reach over to turn a page.

Only twenty minutes a night. He had a big family and there wasn’t much time for his mom to spend one-on-one with any of them; everyone was always in this loud, chaotic group. But she’d given him twenty minutes just the two of them every night. She’d move her whole evening around to make sure they got it. It had meant everything.

Lance cleared his throat.

“Chapter one,” he said. “ _When he was nearly thirteen,”_ he read, _“my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow…_ ”

* * *

 

Lance read until his voice was hoarse.

Having finished helping Coran move the mattresses, Pidge had joined Lance and Keith. She’d started out sitting at the edge of Keith’s bed at his feet so that the three of them were facing each other in a triangle. As time ticked by, though, she’d ended up tucked at Keith’s side furthest from Lance, laying on top of the covers with her arm pressed into Keith’s.

Keith didn’t have any kind of reaction to her proximity, but Pidge didn’t seem to be after a reaction. She was good at that. Just being there.

Eventually, Keith’s eyelids grew heavy and he fell asleep.

Lance stopped reading.

“It’s late,” Pidge said.

Coran stepped forward with a bowl in each hand. “That it is, Number Five. The three of you seemed so content, I chose not to interrupt, but I must insist you catch up on dinner now.”

Pidge scowled, but sat up and took the bowl without arguing. Lance gave Coran a smile and thanked him, because, jeez, someone had to.

While Lance and Pidge ate, Coran busied himself around Keith. He checked screens and fiddled with machines. It was all done so casually, Lance almost didn’t register the giant syringe.

It was filled with pale syrupy liquid. Coran uncapped it. Lance fumbled his spoon and it clattered in his bowl.

Coran looked up. “Everything all right?”

Lance couldn’t take his eyes off that giant freaking syringe.

“It’s to feed him, Lance,” Pidge said. “It goes in the tube.”

Lance swallowed. “Oh.” He relaxed marginally.

The issue seemingly resolved, Coran went back to what he was doing. Lance didn’t pick his spoon back up. He grabbed Keith’s hand.

Coran carefully attached the necessary parts and pushed the contents of the giant syringe into the feeding tube. Lance watched the pale stuff travel to Keith’s nose and disappear. It was all pretty quick. Partway through, though, Lance saw something in Keith’s expression tighten.

It was brief. Keith’s features slackened again almost instantly. But it definitely happened.

It was the closest thing to an actual facial expression Lance had seen Keith make since he’d come out of the pod. In the moment, it felt like hope.

* * *

Pidge brought Lance back from taking him to the bathroom, their faces washed and teeth brushed and both of them in pajamas. She went slow, mostly just steering, letting Lance help with wheeling. With Keith getting out of the pod, it’d been too hectic to do any real practice today.

Lance’s hand caught on one of his rims as they made their way down the hall. Pidge slowed to a stop as Lance shook out his fingers.

“Shit,” he hissed.

“You should wear gloves,” Pidge said.

Lance stared down at his hand. Some of the blisters had popped.

“Unless you’re trying to build calluses,” Pidge said.

“No,” Lance said, tucking his hand under one arm. “No, gloves would probably be good.”

“Is it cool if I take you the rest of the way?” Pidge said.

Pidge was good about that. Never giving help unless she’d made sure Lance wanted it.

“Yeah,” Lance said, laying his hands in his lap. “Thanks.”

Pidge pushed him forward.

“I bet Keith will appreciate you wearing gloves,” she said, picking up their conversation. “I can’t imagine holding _that_ hand would be pleasant.”

“I-what?” Lance huffed. “My hands are awesome to hold.”

“And juicy.”

“Pidge!” Lance whined. “Come on. They weren’t like this earlier. Getting them wet for so long washing my face just broke the skin down or something.”

“Graphic!”

“Yikes. It kind of is, isn’t it?”

Pidge laughed. “We’ll get you some bandaids.”

“Oo. I like the sound of that. Bandaids are, like…”

A twinge ran through Lance’s back. He paused, taking a breath.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Bandaids are, like, the ultimate… _ow_...”

“Lance?”

Pidge had stopped the chair.

Another twinge worked its way through Lance’s spine, this time spreading through his legs like fire before dissipating. Another twinge immediately followed. Lance ground his teeth, unable to keep from groaning.

Pidge’s hand was on his shoulder. “Quiznak, something’s wrong. I’m getting Coran.”

Lance’s gut lurched. He gripped the cuff of Pidge’s sleeve.

“No, don’t!” he said. “Please! Don’t go! Pidgey, don’t-ow! Ugh!”

“I’m here!” she said. She was kneeling in front of him, holding onto the sides of his arms. “I’m staying. It’s okay, Lance.”

The twinges grew, pain gathering rapidly in Lance’s left leg.

Every wave built on the next, so quickly it sucked the breath from Lance’s lungs. And then it just _stayed_.

The muscles in his entire left leg tightened. They tightened and tightened and tightened.

Lance was yelling.

His leg’s muscles were hard as rocks, but it was like they were still trying to get _tighter_.

“Oh, God,” Pidge was saying. “Lance. Breathe!”

The bend at his knee was rigid, his toes pointed up at an awkward angle. It was like a leg cramp, but he’d never had a leg cramp anything close to this.

Lance’s fingers dug into the knotted muscles of his thigh, trying to force the tension out. Pidge was rubbing his arms, saying stuff to him. Lance was screaming too loud to catch the words. Nothing helped. Nothing helped! It wasn’t going away!

It went on long enough that Lance actually formed the coherent thought that it may never stop cramping. There was nothing to make it stop.

But as out-of-nowhere as it had come on, the tension in his muscles suddenly released.

Lance slumped forward.

Pidge had him in a hug, keeping him in his chair. Her tiny hand rubbed circles over his shoulders as he panted to catch his breath.

* * *

For all the effort Pidge and Coran put into moving extra beds into the room, Lance ended up squished next to Keith. Hazily, he was aware that it was his doing. That they'd been putting him on his bed and he'd gotten upset about it because he needed to watch Keith. It was all foggy. Lance didn’t care. Everything was sore and he didn’t want to move. 

He just wanted to wake up from this and never visit it again.

Pidge and Coran were talking, their voices hushed and concerned, but they’d done the scan. Nothing was dangerous or weird or a big deal. The pain had been exactly what it had felt like: Lance’s muscles randomly tightening. According to Coran, it was sometimes part of having spinal cord damage. So, that would just be happening now. 

Lance swallowed past the lump in his throat.

Keith was sleeping. His face was drawn with exhaustion, even as he slept. Lance could hear his soft breaths in the stillness of the room.

It hit Lance right then how alone and individual Keith looked. Lance was curled up right there beside him and pretty soon Pidge would probably be snuggled up on Keith’s opposite side and even then Keith would likely still manage to look alone.

Even with Shiro there, Keith would look alone.

Oh, God. Keith was alone.

Lance would know.

“M-me too,” he whispered.

Lance pressed his face into his hand.

He’d been detached, he guessed. For days, all of this had just kept from clicking. But it was coming together now. The reality.

Keith had a tube in his nose. Lance had a wheelchair parked beside the bed.

Neither of them would ever be the same.

Neither of them could walk. Neither of them could _survive_ without relying on others for the most basic of things. Keith hadn’t met anyone’s eyes yet, hadn’t come even close to speaking.

Lance was barely capable of using the _bathroom_ without help. Under his pajamas, he was wearing the absorbent boxer briefs Coran had switched him to his first day out of the pod.

It occurred to Lance that beneath the med suit, Keith was probably in a diaper.

This was real. This was how they were now.

This was it.

 _This_.

* * *

At some point, Pidge and Coran stopped talking.

The lights in the room lowered. Pidge ended up on Keith’s other side like Lance had guessed she would, bringing an extra pillow and her own covers.

Lance felt a blanket being draped over him, tightened over his shoulders.

Coran rested a hand on his head. Warm and steadying. And stayed there.

No one said anything.

There was nothing left to say.

Lance cried himself to sleep.

Everything had changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been trying to hold off on using the actual names of medical equipment because a. they're probably called different things in space and b. I don't want this fic to sound like a webmd article, but if you were curious, the machine helping Keith breathe is a cpap.
> 
> If you can, please let me know what you thought of this chapter. Tbh, I stressed over this one more than usual, and I dunno if that's cuz I'm just Like That right now or if it's because it actually sucked? Ya'll, I'm a mess.


	5. Some realizations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance takes some time to process everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This chapter came a little easier to me, so it's longer! Thank you to everyone who commented last time! It really helped motivate me!
> 
> So, jsyk, now that I'm doing better with my mental health, I'm trying to be more organized with my updating. I plan to update on Wednesdays from now on. Not every week, lol, that'd end me. But when I do update, it'll happen on a Wednesday.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the chapter :)

_They were in the van, the family van, the teal one with dents in the side._

_Coran drove, one hand on the wheel. Pidge knelt in the passenger’s seat, changing the radio over and over, never settling on a station for more than a few seconds at a time. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. Matt was leaning forward in the seat behind her, trying to reach her, trying to get her to buckle up._

_Allura and Shiro and Hunk were all napping in the back seats, Allura’s arm flopped over Shiro’s stomach, Shiro’s mouth agape and snoring, Hunk’s face lost beneath Allura’s mess of hair._

_Lance sat on the car floor between Matt and the other middle seat, which was where Keith sat._

_Keith was crosslegged, eyes watching the fields go by._

_The window beside Keith was down and Keith held his hand outside of it, letting the wind pull it up and down like his palm was rafting over waves. He was wearing a Garrison uniform, but the jacket was tied around his waist, which wasn’t really up to code. His hair was wet._

_His hair was wet._

_His hair was wet._

_Droplets of moisture fell from the ends of his bangs, dripping into his eyelashes, soaking into his shirt._

_His lips were blue._

_Keith’s lips…were blue._

_Deep in his bones, Lance felt cold._

_“Lance?” Keith said, peering down at him._

* * *

Lance opened his eyes.

The lights were still dimmed for the Castle’s night cycle, but they’d been turned up a fraction.

There was noise coming from beside Lance. It took a moment for it to click that Keith was moaning.

Lance pulled himself upright and faced Keith.

Keith’s eyes were open in slits. His face was drained of color besides the sickly flush in his cheeks and around his eyes. His fingers tensed slightly over the mattress, noticeable only because Lance hadn’t seen Keith move at all besides blinking since Keith had come out of the pod.

The blue mask had been removed from Keith’s face. A transparent one had taken its place. Coran was holding it over Keith’s mouth and he was petting Keith’s hair while Keith groaned.

Pidge was sitting crosslegged on the mattress, her blanket wrapped around her like a cloak. Her face was crumpled with destress, her eyes down, fixed on Keith.

“He’s all right, Lance,” Coran said, continuing to pet Keith’s hair. “It’s an effect of the nasogastric tube. It can cause cramping. It will pass.”

“Stomach cramps?” Lance croaked. “ _That’s_ what’s doing this to him?”

Keith looked like _death_.

“Coran’s giving him some kind of vaporized muscle relaxant,” Pidge said, rubbing her eyes with a grimace. “He should be okay soon.”

Keith’s fingers twitched weakly at his sides, a raspy cry escaping his throat. Lance felt his own face twisting in sympathy. He grabbed Keith’s hand, praying Keith felt it.

“I know, buddy,” Lance said. “I know it sucks. I used to get all the bugs back in public school. The cramps were the worst part besides the puking. I know it fucking hurts.”

Keith’s breath was like steam against the mask. He continued to moan.

“This is horrible,” Pidge whispered.

Lance sank back down on the bed, laying on his side so he was facing Keith. He tucked himself close to Keith’s side, resting a hand over Keith’s middle. Gentle, the way his Mama would when Lance was tiny and the viruses would hit him hard.

“You’re okay, Keith,” Lance said. He moved his thumb back and forth in careful, soothing motions. “Shh, Keith. You’re okay. You’re all right.”

Lance could feel how tight Keith’s insides were just from the small bit of contact. Keith whimpered.

“We’re here,” Lance said quietly. He continued to smooth his thumb back and forth over Keith’s stomach.

Slowly, gradually, the tension lessened beneath Lance’s hand. The noises of pain Keith had been making lessened with it. His fingers gradually stopped twitching.

Coran continued speaking quietly to Keith, reassurances, gentle reminders to relax and that everything was all right. Somewhere in it all, Lance registered Coran exchanging the clear mask back for Keith’s blue one. Pidge lying back down, blanket and all.

Keith’s eyes had closed again by then, and the pain had left his face almost completely. Lance fell back to sleep like that, with his hand still resting on Keith’s stomach.

* * *

The next time Lance was stirred from sleep, the lights had been turned all the way up. It made his eyes burn.

Keith was out cold. Lance was still facing him, his hand still rested on Keith’s middle. Coran had a hand on Lance’s shoulder, jiggling him into wakefulness.

“‘M up,” Lance said. “Is it morning?”

“Not quite,” Coran said. “We thought you might want to be up for this.”

Coran gestured behind him.

Lance pulled himself upright a bit to peer around Coran and Coran helped by stepping aside.

Hunk was in the doorway, full armor, mid-step.

Right there.

Lance grabbed the bedrail. “HUNK!”

Hunk’s whole face melted with emotion.

Oh, God.

Hunk ran.

It was a good thing, too.

In the haze of the moment, Lance forgot about his legs and nearly pitched over the bedrail when he made to meet Hunk in the middle.

Hunk grabbed Lance up before he could topple, keeping him on the mattress, but taking a good amount of Lance’s weight in his arms. The hardness of Hunk’s armor didn’t take away from it. It was the most perfect, all encompassing, Hunk-hug ever.

“Hunk!” Lance cried, clinging to Hunk’s back. His voice had cracked on the word, but Lance didn’t care.

“Oh, man,” Hunk said, his voice watery. “Oh, man. Lance.”

Behind Lance was movement. A sound like shifting sheets. He heard Pidge sniffle and say, “See? Told you there was no point in trying to let us sleep.”

Matt’s voice chuckled close to her. “Never doubted you, sis.”

They were home. Oh, God, they were _home_. Lance hadn’t even begun to realize how much he’d needed this, but now he had it and it was almost too much to hold.

Hunk had a hand on the back of Lance’s head and was rocking him now and, quiznak, did Lance want his mom. But if there was a small step down from his mom, it was this. So Lance clung and he clung and he let the latest wave of everything carry him into the next moment and the next and the next. And the next.

* * *

Lance ended up on the bed they’d moved from his room. He was too out of it to really register the transfer, just that he was there instead of where he had been. Hunk was still with him, out of his armor and in pajamas now. 

Pidge’s mattress had been scooted right next to Lance’s to create one big mattress and she, Matt, and Allura were all sitting close to Lance too.

Coran remained standing, right there in front of Keith’s bed, holding a tablet and speaking quietly. He had a hand on Shiro’s back.

Shiro stood with Coran. He stood stock still, his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide and scared-looking. He was the only one out of everyone who hadn’t changed out of his armor.

And Lance was tired, so bone-tired it hurt. He may not have been thinking clearly. But it struck him as off that Shiro hadn’t touched Keith once yet. He hadn’t gotten an inch closer than he was now.

* * *

So, there was something Lance never spoke of out loud.

No one ever told Lance that Keith didn’t have a family.

It was one of those things that came up in Lance’s thoughts sometimes.

No one ever _told_ him.

It had been hinted at, he guessed.

Back at the garrison, the way some people spoke about Keith. Certain teachers. Certain students who’d known Keith from before they became cadets. The sideways looks some people would make. The way they’d word things, with disclaimers, like, “In spite of…” and, “Well, it figures…”

The way Shiro had always seemed to be right there, at Keith’s side.

 _On_ Keith’s side.

Looking back, all of that really should’ve been an indicator. But the only thing indicated to Lance at the time was that Keith had a bad attitude.

It had made sense. Keith could afford to have a bad attitude.

He was that good.

Later, though, there’d been more stuff.

Like how when Keith got booted out of the Garrison, Lance never saw anyone come to pick him up.

Like how when they rescued Shiro together, Keith took them to a rundown shack that looked really lived in but not exactly liveable.

Like how Keith had just happened to have a bunch of clothes sized for a tall adult man in a closet, and how those had looked lived in too; the mixed look of pain and of reverence when Keith had handed Shiro several articles of those clothes to change into.

Hearing that Keith had been out in the desert that whole time since he’d been expelled.

It should’ve tipped Lance off then, but it hadn’t. Because Keith was like that, self sufficient and badass, and that’s exactly what living alone in the desert was. Self sufficient and badass.

It had been the year in space that had slowly filled it in.

And even then, it hadn’t been one thing.

Keith’s weirdly intense sense of independence continued to rub Lance the wrong way for a while before he realized Keith just didn’t know how to depend on other people.

It took finding out Keith’s mom had been Galra and that Keith hadn’t known it for Lance to finally surmise that Keith therefore hadn’t known his own mother.

From there, things started falling into place more and more, but it still took Shiro disappearing from the Black Lion and Keith just about having a complete breakdown about it before Lance truly realized what was going on.

That Shiro was the closest thing Keith had to family.

That Keith didn’t _have_ a family.

And Lance wanted to say it had changed everything for him. But it hadn’t been like that. It hadn’t been a big dramatic moment.

Because it was just the last moment in a several years long series of tiny moments. Several years of tiny little ‘off’ things that had already sunk in with time.

And the thing about it was, Lance had spent those several years arguing with those tiny little ‘off’ things. Not arguing with whether they were true, but arguing with whether they mattered.

Because even if Lance hadn’t seen anyone pick Keith up when he’d been expelled, even if Keith had lived in the desert by himself, even if Keith didn’t have a lot of people skills, wasn’t great at depending on others, never seemed to talk about home, didn’t mention family ever at all, none of that was an excuse for treating other people badly.

That reasoning had made its home in Lance’s brain. It had seemed sound. Of course it wasn’t okay to yell at your teammates. Of course it wasn’t okay to go off on your own during a mission that relies on teamwork, like the rest of your team is holding you back, like their words don’t even matter. Of course it was okay for Lance to find that all to be unacceptable. It _was_ unacceptable.

But then Keith had lost Shiro and Lance had realized that Keith had no family.

And it hadn’t felt big.

And Lance’s first thought had been that it still wasn’t an excuse.

It had been instant, a reflex, from years of coming to that same conclusion. But it was the first time Lance ever felt sick with himself after he thought it.

Because Keith had lost everything.

And Lance’s first instinct had been to find a way to make that not matter.

* * *

Lance woke, feeling heavy.

He extended his hand across the mattress, feeling for any other warm bodies nearby. He’d been out of it during the night, but he was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep with company.

His hand reached through empty blankets, though. His eyelids peeled open, the bright castle overheads burning into his corneas. He blinked a couple of times, eyes watering, adjusting.

Shiro was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at him.

Lance’s whole body jarred, taken by surprise to the bone.

“Whoa!” Shiro said, hand bracing Lance’s shoulder. “Easy there. It’s just me.”

Lance found himself pulling upright with Shiro’s help. It was instinctual, to sit up in Shiro’s presence. Laying there half-asleep felt wrong.

Lance’s gaze darted around the room, searching.

His and Pidge’s mattresses were still squished together and there were about ten pillows and blankets that weren’t his rumpled all around him. But no one else was sitting there but him and Shiro.

The only other person in the room besides them was Keith. Still in his bed. Lying on his back the way Lance had left him. He was sleeping, it looked like. His eyes were closed and his whole body was tucked under that beige blanket like a cocoon.

“Where’s Hunk?” Lance said, not taking his eyes off Keith.

“He’s eating lunch,” Shiro said. “With the others. I told them to go. They’ll be back soon.”

Lance let out a breath. “Oh.” He looked up at Shiro. “I slept that long?”

Shiro gave him an odd look. “You needed it, buddy.”

“Guess so.”

“Well,” Shiro’s hands twitched. “If you’re hungry, I can…um.”

Lance shook his head. “Not hungry.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Lance looked back at Keith. Laying so still with the mask and that tube still stuck in his nose, taped to the side of his face.

“How is he?” Lance said.

Shiro was silent.

Lance looked up.

Shiro’s eyes were locked on the floor. The muscles in his jaw flexed over and over like he was trying to form words.

But none came.

Oh.

“He,” Lance said, “had a stomach ache last night?”

Shiro blinked hard. “Right. No. Um. Nothing like that. He’s just been sleeping.”

“That’s good.”

Shiro didn’t look like he thought it was good, though. He looked kind of like he was only halfway present. Some of him was somewhere else, seeing stuff Lance didn’t see.

“Even when he’s awake,” Shiro said. “It’s like…like he’s just…”

Shiro cut himself off, clearing his throat.

They were both quiet. Shiro stared at the wall, not really moving besides breathing.

Lance sat back against his pillows, feeling hollow.

Maybe he _was_ hungry. He just wasn’t feeling it right.

Suddenly, Shiro sat up straight and met Lance’s eyes.

“Anyway,” Shiro said. “How are you doing?”

For a moment, Lance didn’t move.

Was.

Was Shiro serious?

“Uh,” Lance said.

He closed his mouth.

He tried again. “Fine?”

“Really?” said Shiro. And there was that odd look again.

“Um, yes?”

“You can talk to me,” Shiro said.

“Okay…”

What the hell was Lance supposed to say?

Shiro knew, right?

Coran would’ve told him by now. Lance’s wheelchair was still parked in the middle of the floor. So, Shiro knew.

So, Shiro had just, what? Decided he wasn’t comfortable talking about Keith so he’d just talk about Lance instead?

That was…

Lance didn’t know what to feel about that.

Shiro shifted where he sat. “Coran said you had some pain before bed last night?”

Jesus.

Lance stared at his knees. He shrugged.

“Lance,” Shiro said.

His voice had turned soft. He gripped Lance’s shoulder.

Oh, God.

“Can we,” Lance said, “maybe not?”

“Huh?”

Lance shrugged away from Shiro. He hugged himself, hugged the hollow feeling in his stomach. Still staring at his knees beneath the blankets.

“I think both of us don’t really want to talk right now,” said Lance.

The sheets rustled as Shiro sat back, his hand coming to rest in his lap.

“Yeah,” Shiro said. “Sure, Lance. Whatever you want.”

Lance huddled against his pillows, feeling tired and heavy and drained. He let his eyelids fall shut.

“I think I want to be alone,” Lance whispered.

Lance could hear Shiro swallow.

“Okay,” said Shiro.

The sheets rustled as Shiro stood up.

* * *

Hunk suggested Lance room with him for a while and Lance accepted the invitation.

He wasn’t really sure how he was feeling anymore, but he knew he didn’t feel good around Shiro right now. And, honestly, he could also use some time apart from Keith.

All of this, it was too much.

Too much pain from too many sources. Too much loss. Too many feelings to process. Lance needed time to sort his own self out.

Hunk seemed to get that.

He didn’t try talking about any of it.

Lance didn’t know if Shiro had warned him not to or if Hunk just inherently knew. Lance didn’t want to ask and risk having a whole conversation about it. He was grateful, no matter the reason.

* * *

A week passed and Lance was getting better at using his wheelchair. He could go forward with almost no problems. 

He did still slide a little in his seat.

“I’ll add that to my mental list,” Hunk said, hand hovering at Lance’s seat back.

Lance was practicing sharp turns in the training room. Hunk didn’t need to follow as close as he was. It had been days since Lance had last tipped and it hadn’t even hurt that much. But arguing with Hunk, with anyone, was exhausting right now. So Lance left it.

“You plan on turning that mental list into a real list?” Lance said, giving one of his rims a spin while he activated the brake on the other wheel. “Don’t wanna clog up your brain with a bunch of loose notes.”

“Okay, first off,” Hunk said, “I feel like you just implied mental lists aren’t real list, which, how could you, Lance? I thought we were friends.”

Lance laughed a little.

“Secondly,” Hunk said. “If my brain ever does get clogged, don’t worry, it’s not gonna be your wheelchair modifications thatdo it. It’ll be something scary and horrifying and probably from space. Like that time food attacked me.”

“Well, good to know,” Lance said. “In that case, why don’t you add extra-comfortable-space-cushion to the list? My butt feels like it’s about to fall off.”

“Oh, whoa,” Hunk said. “Hey, for sure, but maybe you should stop for a second? If you’re in pain…”

Hunk didn’t wait for a response. He had a hand on Lance’s seat back, yanking him to a stop.

Lance turned in his seat. “Jesus, Hunk! We talked about this!”

Hunk put his hands up immediately. “Right. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

Except, Hunk did this all the time.

Lance scowled.

“I just,” Hunk said, drooping, “I get worried when you push yourself. You know you’re supposed to be careful with your circulation now.”

And…shit.

Lance couldn’t argue with that.

Hunk shouldn’t have pulled him. He should’ve let Lance stop on his own. But Lance understood why Hunk hadn’t waited.

Because recent history dictated that Lance couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself.

Hunk had been the _one_ person who’d suspected something might really be wrong with Lance’s back from the moment Lance had felt sore. Hunk was the _one_ person whose advice might’ve solved everything before it could become a problem. And Lance was in a wheelchair because he’d ignored him.

Lance slouched.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “You’re right. Sorry. I don’t…always feel pain the same down there. It’s hard to know what’s a problem.”

“Hey,” Hunk said. “No. It wasn’t cool of me grabbing your chair like that. You were right to be upset.”

“Eh, I’ll be more upset if I get pressure sores from sitting on my ass all day.” Lance gave him a grin, extending his hand. “Care to help me fluff my butt?”

Hunk snorted. He took his hand. “Fluff your butt. Good one, Lance.”

Hunk held him steady and kept his chair from tipping while Lance tilted his hips to one side and then the other, giving enough time on each for the blood flow to return.

It kind of tingled and hurt, but pain really was different below the damaged part of his spine. It was more distant, like he was feeling it through layers of painkillers.

Except when his left leg’s muscle tone had freaked out that one time. There had been nothing distant about that pain.

Lance sank back in his chair with a sigh. “Much better.”

“Wanna stretch?” Hunk said. “Grab a snack? Call it a day? I was thinking waffles for dinner.”

“Mm, as good as that sounds, I think I’m gonna do a few more laps.” Lance wiggled his gloved fingers, working the joints. “You feel free to get started on those waffles, though. I’m good here.”

“Oh,” Hunk said. He didn’t move. “Uh, no. You know, it’s actually early to start dinner, anyway. I’ll just hang out here with you.”

Lance flicked his rims, gliding forward ahead of Hunk. Hunk trailed after him. Hand hovering near to Lance’s seat back.

“Yep. Sounds great,” Lance mumbled.

* * *

For as much as Lance hadn’t felt it when he’d figured out Keith had no family, Lance was definitely feeling it now.

He felt it so strongly he felt physically ill. His skin stung with it, bones ached with it, stomach roiled with the guilt. Every thought toward Keith was a knife in his gut. Because Lance wasn’t sure Keith could really hear him. And Lance never said he was sorry.

He’s sorry for taking Keith wrong for so long. He’s sorry for being cruel about stuff he was too dense to realize he was being cruel about. He’s sorry if Keith ever felt worthless or rejected because of something Lance said to him or about him. God, Lance was just so dense.

He’s sorry it’s taken him so damn long to apologize.

He didn’t realize he needed to for the longest time.

And then, when he did realize, he didn’t know how. He may have been scared to.

And the fact was, Keith didn’t seem to expect an apology.

And that should’ve been tragic enough to kick Lance’s butt into gear.

But instead, it’d turned into an excuse.

And Lance had waited.

Because he told himself it needed to be the right timing. That it could wait. That Keith cared more about actions than words, and Lance was acting better. They joked and stuff. They relied on each other. That was better than an apology. Lance was just saving the apology as, like, the icing on the cake of their friendship. For closure or something. He’d just been waiting for the best time. And that’s how he’d lived with the fact that he’d never said sorry.

Because he was getting to it.

But now time was up.

And they were never getting it back.

Lance was pretty sure Keith wasn’t listening anymore.

And Lance felt sick.

* * *

Lance jerked awake, sweat pouring off him.

Hunk was sitting up beside him, blinking like a sleepy kitten.

Lance gulped a breath. All over, he was shaking.

“Lance?” Hunk said. “Whoa, man. You okay?”

“I d-dunno,” Lance said.

“Okay,” Hunk said. He rested his hand over Lance’s arm. “That’s okay. Just take some deep breaths. Did you have a bad dream?”

Lance shrugged, shuddering through it. He probably looked like a total case. He was so uncomfortable. He was so sweaty he felt like he was…

Oh.

Lance closed his eyes.

“Hunk, I definitely wet the bed.”

“What?”

The covers rustled. Hunk was pulling them away for an inspection. Lance’s face burned.

“You did?” Hunk said. “Are you sure? I don’t see anything.”

Lance covered his face with a shaking hand. “Coran gave me special underwear.”

“Dude, you’re shaking like crazy.”

Weird, dull pain radiated through Lance’s spine and legs.

“Oh, God.”

“Lance? What’s going on?”

The dull pain grew sharp. His muscles turned hard.

Lance pounded the wall beside him with his fist. “Can I have a _fucking_ break?!”

“You’re really freaking me out right now.”

The muscles in Lance’s left leg seized up, cramping so hard Lance shouted.

“Lance!” said Hunk. “Oh, man, your leg!”

Lance tugged at Hunk’s sleeve. “Get Coran!”

“Right!”

Lance’s muscles spasmed, hip to toe, like a taught rubber band on the edge of snapping. The force of the pain hit him up to his skull. Lance screamed.

There were noises from the hall. Footsteps and voices and doors opening and closing.

“Oh, buddy.”

Shiro’s voice.

Right beside him.

“I’m going to pick you up, okay?”

A warm hand slid beneath Lance’s shoulders while a cool prosthetic scooped under his knees. Lance screamed through clenched teeth as he was lifted off the mattress. His bad leg bent at a weird angle over Shiro’s arm, cramping tighter.

“I know,” Shiro said. His voice was thick. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Lance could hear Hunk’s voice, but he couldn’t process words anymore. His fingers dug into Shiro’s arm, his screams tearing up his throat. Shiro ran with him.

They entered the infirmary without Lance realizing it. One moment they were in the halls, the next, the lights were burning his eyes and he was being held down on an exam table.

“Right. Deep breaths, Lance,” Coran said.

Something rubbery pressed against Lance’s face and the air took on a sickly sweet quality. Lance flinched away, moaning.

“Come on, buddy,” Shiro said. “Come on.”

The rubbery feeling and sweet smell followed Lance. He gasped on it, coughing after. It made his stomach swim. But his shoulders…

Felt all melty.

“That’s it,” said Shiro.

Lance dug his fingers into his thigh and whimpered.

“Keep breathing, my boy,” Coran said.

By the time Lance’s leg had relaxed, he’d breathed in so much of the sweet stuff, he felt like he’d be sick.

Coran took the rubbery thing off his face and Lance swallowed over and over, trying not to lose it.

“You’re okay,” Shiro said softly, pushing Lance’s hair from his face. “We’ve got you.”

One of Lance’s breaths ended with a gag.

Shiro pulled him onto his side.

Lance gripped the edge of the exam table and vomited partially digested waffles all over the floor.

“It’s okay,” Shiro said, his hand resting between Lance’s shoulders. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay, Lance.”

Lance did not feel okay.

He retched, bringing up acid. It came up so hard, his sinuses burned. He was sweating again. His skin stung with it.

He coughed. He flopped against the table, limp, shaking miserably. Shiro alternated between rubbing his back and stroking his hair.

“Was that normal?” Shiro said.

“A possible side effect of the vapor,” Coran said. “It’s rare. I’d feel more comfortable if we kept him overnight to be monitored.”

Lance blinked tired eyes over at Keith.

The noise had been enough to wake him up. No wonder. Lance _had_ been screaming. Keith’s eyes were open. He was staring forward, looking at nothing.

“I’ll help,” Shiro said.

“You need your rest,” said Coran, like a plea. “I can manage here.”

“I appreciate it, Coran. But I’m not sleeping tonight.”

A pause.

“Ah. Understood, Number One.”

Lance blinked up at Shiro. Shiro gave him a thin smile.

“How about some fresh pajamas?” Shiro said.

Lance didn’t even have the strength to feel embarrassed. He nodded.

“There’s a private bathroom through that door there,” Coran said.

“Can I pick you up, bud?” said Shiro.

Lance nodded.

Shiro lifted him, careful with Lance’s legs. It was like he was scared of triggering more pain. Lance was too tired to bother telling him it was over.

Shiro turned to Coran and said, “Could you tell Hunk he can leave Lance’s stuff outside the door?”

Coran saluted. “Count on it.”

Lance leaned his cheek against Shiro’s shoulder, soaking up the warmth. The sweat on his face was drying and it was making him shiver worse. They were leaving Coran with the waffle vomit, he realized. Lance kind of felt like crying.

The bathroom was white. All white. White floor, white walls, white sink, white tub, white toilet, white towels. And it was big. There were handles on the walls and there was a bench built into the tub.

The whole Castle, Lance had already observed, had been built handicap-accessible. There were elevators and ramps for every set of stairs and all the doors opened wide enough for his chair to go through. Even the communal bathroom stalls and showers were manageable.

This, though. This wasn’t just accessible. It was like this bathroom had been specifically designed for him. Down to the mirror on the wall being lowered to chair-height.

Lance suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable.

Bathrooms like this were for disabled people. Lance wasn’t a disabled person. Lance had a disability. And just thinking about it like that made him feel stupid and shitty, because those were the same thing, weren’t they? But in his head, it wasn’t the same at all. It really, really wasn’t. In his head, Lance could use the same bathrooms at everyone else. He’d been doing that up until now just fine. He’d been doing it all his life.

“I’m going to go ahead and set you down on that bench,” Shiro said, already moving toward the tub.

The tub?

Why the…?

Oh.

God, right.

He didn’t just need new pajamas.

Lance needed a shower.

Shiro stepped over the lip and Lance stiffened involuntarily.

“You okay?” Shiro said, pausing.

No. Probably not. Lance nodded, though. He wasn’t sure what else to do.

Shiro leaned over and set Lance down.

Lance slumped against the wall, core like taffy. The cool tile chilled his back through his pajamas, old sweat sticking his shirt to his skin, and he wanted to flinch away, but his body was so heavy. He just sat there like a lump.

Shiro stood over him.

Oh.

Right.

That was how this was gonna go. Shiro was staying.

Lance felt sick in a different way from before.

Up until now, he’d avoided this.

Pidge or Hunk had always stayed outside his stall as a precaution, but as long as Lance had help getting from his wheelchair to the toilet or the shower chair, he’d been fine taking care of things himself.

Right now, though, even _he_ wouldn’t have trusted himself alone in here. He was so drained, he’d probably tilt right off the bench and bust his head on the bathtub if Shiro left him.

He’d just…he’d been avoiding this.

Not the help. Lance could accept help when he needed it. He just.

Really didn’t like being naked in front of anyone.

Shiro had stepped out of the tub and was keeping an eye on Lance through the corner of his vision while he rifled through a cabinet, pulling out bottles of soap and shampoo.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Shiro said. He said it with forced casualness, pulling out another bottle and setting it on the edge of the sink.

Lance tugged at his shirt hem. It was weird. The words were simple, but they were stuck in his throat, like something big. He opened his mouth and it just stayed like that for a while.

Shiro stopped what he was doing.

He came to sit on the edge of the tub, turning to face toward Lance.

“I’m listening,” said Shiro.

And he just sat there. Waiting.

Lance swallowed.

He shivered.

The back of his mouth still tasted like vomit.

“I…um,” Lance said. “It’s not like we can do anything about it. So, it doesn’t matter.”

Shiro nodded but stayed where he was. It occurred to Lance that he was waiting for more.

“I’m,” Lance said, “m-modest?”

Shiro raised his eyebrows.

Lance felt ill.

“We can absolutely do something about that,” Shiro said.

“W-we…we can?”

“We can,” Shiro said. “Let’s talk about it.”

Lance was honestly…way too tired to have a real conversation about this. But that turned out to be fine, because Shiro did most of the talking.

“Would you be more comfortable with someone else?” he said. “Hunk’s on his way.”

Lance shook his head.

He wasn’t comfortable with anybody for this. And Hunk was awesome, he was the best, but he had a way of kind of catching Lance’s anxiety and escalating it sometimes, and Lance really didn’t want to deal with that right now.

“Okay,” Shiro said. “How about a towel? You can keep it on the whole time.”

That…

Wasn’t a bad idea.

Lance nodded. He nodded more times than he meant to.

Shiro smiled. “Okay.”

He stood up and grabbed a towel off the rack. He shook it out to its full size. It was thick and kind of huge, like a beach towel.

“Can I lay this over your lap?” Shiro said.

Lance nodded.

The towel was heavy and soft. Lance was pretty sure it was better than the ones they had in the communal bathrooms. Or maybe the ones in there had been soft like this at the beginning. They’d just worn out with time.

Shiro helped Lance tie the towel around his waist, doing most of the work while Lance just sort of…leaned forward against Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro talked the whole time, asking if things were okay, narrating to Lance everything he was going to do before he did it. Lance appreciated it. He really was too tired for a conversation, but he could listen, and he appreciated all the warnings. The towel idea was helping, but he was still about to shower with someone right there with him.

“You okay?” Shiro said, again.

Lance nodded against his shoulder.

“Okay,” said Shiro. “Do you need help with your shirt?”

Lance did need help with his shirt. The one he was wearing had buttons, and the buttonholes were kind of tight, and usually Lance could get them, but right now it was just bad. Shiro helped.

Luckily, the pajama pants were elastic.

Lance managed those and the underwear, apologizing the whole time because Shiro had to keep him upright through the entire process and Lance was very, very slow. Shiro just told him to take his time, which was funny, because there was literally no other option. Lance couldn’t rush anything right now.

His pajamas ended up strewn across the bottom of the tub and Lance ended up slumped against Shiro, staring at one of the walls, too tired to move. Shiro chuckled.

“Aw, man, buddy,” he said. “That vapor stuff really got you, huh?”

Mm. Yeah, that was definitely part of it. A part of Lance was tempted to correct Shiro, though. Tell him that, actually, this was kind of just how things were for him now. Doing simple things like changing his own damn clothes made him break an actual sweat.

But then it hit Lance really hard why Shiro wouldn’t know that. Because Lance had been avoiding Shiro all week.

This was the first time Shiro was really experiencing Lance’s new limitations.

The first time.

And Shiro was just…

He’d just been acting like this was normal.

“Lance?” Shiro said.

He had his arm hooked around Lance’s back, keeping him steady.

Caring for the person who’d gotten pissed off and avoided him for a week. And not even mentioning it. Just caring.

“Are you okay?” Shiro said.

Lance swallowed past a lump in his throat. “N-no?”

Lance’s breath hitched. He buried his face in Shiro’s collar.

Shiro’s arms tightened around him in a hug.

“Hey, easy,” Shiro said. “You’re okay. I’m here.”

Lance tried to cling to him, but his grip was weak.

God, what kind of person was he?

Lance didn’t mean to be some kind of awful jerk, but maybe it just happened. Maybe he didn’t have to think about it. He did it by accident. Which was just another word for naturally.

“I suck,” Lance said.

Shiro gripped his shoulders. “You don’t suck.”

“I hurt Keith. I n-never said sorry! He’s a f-fucking orphan, Shiro! I made fun of an orphan for having emotional issues!”

Shiro’s expression crumpled. “Lance.”

“I ignored you for a whole week,” Lance said, shaking his head. “A whole _week_. Couldn’t handle my own feelings so I just avoided both of you and hid with Hunk, for a whole week, right after I told Keith I,” Lance’s voice broke, “I’d stay with him.”

“Hey.” Shiro held him, rubbing his arm. “Hey, shh. It’s okay.”

“It’s n-not okay!” Lance shuddered. “I don’t deserve this.”

“Bullshit,” Shiro said. He said it sharp and serious, like an order.

“It’s not bullshit,” Lance said. “It’s true!”

“You are _seventeen_ years old,” Shiro said. His body had tensed. “You just lost your ability to _walk_. Your friend has a traumatic brain injury. How the hell are you _supposed_ to be dealing with this? You’re talking about it like a week is an excessive amount of time. Lance, it’s been a week for me too, and I still can’t bring myself to even touch him.”

Lance gulped.

He hooked a hand onto the fabric of Shiro’s shirt, clutching weakly.

Shiro hugged him closer, brushing a hand through Lance’s hair.

“Buddy, you don’t suck,” Shiro said. “You’re struggling. We all are. We’re processing some pretty big losses.”

Lance sniffled. “I don’t think I _can_ , Shiro.”

Can’t process. Can’t do this. Can’t get to the other side of it all.

“Yeah,” Shiro said weakly. “I’m not so sure I can, either.”

Lance was pretty much useless after that.

He stayed with his face pressed into Shiro’s shoulder the whole awkward shower.

Shiro definitely got wet staying there with him. Didn’t say a word about it, though. Just scrubbed Lance’s skin with a cloth and rinsed the suds out of his sweaty hair and talked Lance through the whole thing so he wasn’t caught off guard by any of it.

When it was finished, Shiro helped Lance strategically replace the soaked towel around his waist with a dry one before sitting Lance down on the closed toilet.

He wrapped a second dry towel around Lance’s shoulders like a shawl.

“Can I help?” Shiro said.

Lance nodded.

Shiro lifted the towel from Lance’s shoulders and draped it over his head, ruffling it gently over Lance’s dripping hair. Lance hunched over.

His mom used to do this to him, when he was a kid. When he’d get out of the bath or out of the ocean. She’d dried his hair with a towel for him before he’d been capable of doing it for himself.

* * *

Sometime much after Lance had been tucked in, late into the night, when everyone probably assumed he’d fallen asleep, Lance heard Coran and Shiro whispering to each other.

“It’s possible,” Coran said, “that your home planet may be better equipped to handle Keith’s condition than we are here. Young Matthew has been educating me on certain earth facilities?”

“We are _not_ putting Keith in a home,” Shiro said. His voice was quiet, but his tone was harsh.

“A home?”

“Did Matt tell you Keith should be in one? Was this _his_ idea?”

“No, no. Nothing like that, Number One. He only answered what I asked. I wanted to know our options. I wanted to make sure we were doing what’s best for Keith.”

“What’s best for him is to be here with us.”

“But with us while we’re fighting a war, Shiro? While he requires constant care?”

“We’ll find a way to give it to him,” Shiro said.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not sure it’s as simple as you seem to believe it is.”

“I know it won’t be easy,” Shiro said. “Believe me, Coran. I understand. But we need to make it work. I can’t budge on this. You don’t know what those places are like for kids like Keith.”

Lance wasn’t sure if Shiro even realized he’d called Keith a kid or if he’d meant to. Coran didn’t comment on it.

“Right,” Coran said. “Yes, of course. We’ll find a way to make it work, then, shall we? Perhaps recruit some extra help? Preferably someone with a level of expertise in humans.”

“What about expertise in Galra?” Shiro said. “We met someone with the Blade. On our mission.”

“Ah, yes. I’ve been informed.” Coran sounded sad. “Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll be much help here. Keith may be part Galra, but thus far, his body’s response to this injury has been exclusively human. I see no indicators of that changing. It is regrettable. Human brains are so very fragile.”

* * *

Lance woke there with Hunk snuggled against him and Keith in his bed a few feet away.

Hunk was snoring.

“Ah,” Coran said, meeting Lance’s eyes. He stood beside Keith’s bed with Shiro. Both of them looked tired. “You’re awake. How are you feeling, my boy?”

Lance’s brain went through the events of the night that had led to him being there and felt a little weird about it. But it wasn’t exactly in a bad way.

“I, um,” Lance said. “Good, I guess. Uh, clean?”

Coran smiled. “That you are.”

“Are you hungry?” Shiro said.

“Um. Yeah,” Lance said. “I think I really am.”

Shiro looked like he was going to say something, but Coran beat him to it.

“I’ll go fetch you some of Hunk’s famous oat-wheels!”

Coran was definitely referring to oatmeal. Lance nodded.

Coran left the room.

Hunk continued to snore.

Lance propped himself up, untucking himself from Hunk. It was a process. Lance never realized how much he used his legs in the act of sitting upright until he lost that ability.

“Do you need help?” Shiro said quietly.

Lance shook his head. “I got it. Good to do what I can on my own, y’know?”

Shiro relaxed a bit where he stood. He nodded and said, “Yes,” like he really did know.

Lance looked across the way at Keith.

He was awake. Staring at the wall like usual.

Something was kind of off, though.

It took a moment to figure it out. But then…

“Shiro, where’s his mask?” Lance said, lurching forward in his bed. “He’s not wearing any…”

Shiro was at Lance’s side in an instant, gripping his arm like he was scared of Lance standing up and walking away.

“It’s okay, Lance. He’s okay! He doesn’t need it right now. He’s fine.”

Lance blinked. “What do you mean he doesn’t need it right now? I thought…”

Keith hadn’t been breathing consistently on his own, last he’d checked.

“He’s acclimated, buddy,” Shiro said. “He still needs the help when he sleeps, but he breathes fine on his own if he’s awake now.”

Lance wasn’t sure how to take that. It was good, right? Then why did it feel scary?

“I,” Lance said. “But, what if he stops? If he doesn’t have the mask, what happens if he stops?”

“Then we’d be notified by his med-suit immediately,” Shiro said. “And we’d put the mask back on before he could miss two breaths. Lance, I promise I wouldn’t have let this happen if it wasn’t safe for him.”

And that was something Lance could believe.

Slow relief seeped into his veins.

“Okay,” Lance said. “Yes. Um.”

He looked over at Keith.

“H-he’s improving,” Lance said. It almost hurt to say it. Hurt to hope.

Shiro was quiet for a moment.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “I guess that’s true.”

Lance took a shaky breath.

Keith was laying there, same as always, propped up by pillows, staring at the wall. Every so often, he’d do a slow, emotionless blink. He still had the feeding tube in his nose, threaded around one side of his face and taped to his skin. Without the mask, though, his mouth was visible. It hung open a bit. His lower lip shone with spit. There was a piece of green cloth tied around his neck and Lance realized it was a bib. For drool.

A sharp pang shot through Lance’s heart.

“I want to talk to him,” Lance said. He looked up at Shiro. “Can you take me? I want him to know I’m there. I need to talk to him.”

Shiro seemed to hesitate, like he was thinking it through.

His conclusion was, “Is it all right if I carry you?”

Lance nodded, reaching his arms up like a kid.

Hunk slept through the whole transfer, and Lance didn’t blame him. As upset as Lance had been last night, he hadn’t been woke from a dead sleep by his best friend having some kind of horrific muscle spasticity fit. Hunk deserved all the sleep.

Shiro lowered Lance down next to Keith expertly, managing to set Lance down without so much as brushing his hand against Keith. Keith didn’t react to the extra presence beside him. It was fine. Lance hadn’t expected him to.

Shiro stood to the side, watching them.

Lance scooted so that his arm and Keith’s were pressed together. He leaned back against Keith’s propped up pillows, and hooked his hand with Keith’s.

“So, I, uh,” Lance said. “I disappeared on you for a while.”

Lance winced to himself.

“I know, right?” he said. “Right after I promised I wouldn’t leave. But, listen. It wasn’t anything you did, okay? I was being shitty. I had all these emotions and they got overwhelming so I was just avoiding people. I’m sorry about that. I’ve got no good excuse. I should’ve told you, at least. I shouldn’t have just left. But I did, and I guess there’s nothing I can do to fix that, but I will try to do better, okay? I’m sorry, Keith. I’m gonna try to do better.”

Lance could practically feel tension radiating from Shiro for whatever reason, but he kept his eyes on Keith. Because this was about him and Keith.

“So, that’s in the past,” Lance said. “If it’s cool, I want to focus on now for a second. Dude, you’re breathing on your own.” Lance grinned. “That’s so awesome.”

Keith did a slow blink.

“Look, I don’t want this to come off as patronizing, because it isn’t, dude. Genuinely. I am so proud of you. Like, jeez. I can’t tell you how good it is to just be able to see your entire face. I missed it, man.”

He had.

He’d missed seeing Keith’s entire face.

It was on a whim, just sort of a gut feeling that Lance impulsively acted on, but he wedged his arm under Keith in order to wrap it around his shoulders.

Keith was heavier than Lance expected him to be. He guessed it made sense. Keith was basically deadweight now. Keith’s head lolled against Lance’s shoulder, his nose tucked against his shirt.

For a second, Lance panicked.

Keith had only just started reliably breathing on his own and here Lance was blocking an entire airway. He calmed himself down in the moment, keeping himself from jolting Keith or freaking Shiro out, and gently reached with his other hand to turn Keith’s head at a better angle.

“Sorry, buddy,” Lance said, rubbing Keith’s arm. “Didn’t mean to squish your face. I guess I should’ve asked you before I did that. You’re not super touchy-feely, anyway, are you? I can back off, if you want. It just…kind of felt like you could use a hug for a second there?”

Of course, there was no way to know whether Keith was okay with this or not. There was no way to know if he even realized it was happening. But if he was listening, they owed it to him to talk like it, even if he didn’t respond.

Shiro took a sharp breath.

For a moment, Lance didn’t know why.

But then he met Keith’s eyes. And…

And that shouldn’t have been possible, because Keith was still facing forward, toward the wall, and his eyes always faced the direction he faced. But he was looking up at Lance. His eyes had shifted up to stare right at Lance.

“Oh…” Lance said. “Oh, m-my God. Shiro?”

“I see it,” Shiro said. “I see it.”

“He’s looking at me,” Lance said.

“He is,” Shiro said. He sounded breathless.

There was a rustling sound across the room and then the sound of Hunk yawning.

“Hey,” Hunk said. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” Shiro said. “It’s…it’s great. Come here, buddy. Come look. Come look at this.”

Lance kept his eyes fixed with Keith’s.

It didn’t feel real. Lance was scared to look away, scared to end it. He needed this to be real.

“Holy…” Hunk said. “He’s…he’s really doing that.”

Keith’s face didn’t hold any emotion, but there was an awareness in his dark eyes that hadn’t been there before. A light in them. Lance bit his lip, feeling choked up. Keith continued to stare up at him.

“W-what if it’s a fluke?” Lance whispered. He was going to cry.

“This doesn’t look like a fluke,” Hunk said.

“Move a little to your left, Lance.” Shiro said.

Lance did. Just out of Keith’s sight.

Keith’s eyes shifted, followed Lance that little bit left. Refocused back on him.

“Oh, my God,” Hunk said. “His gaze is tracking you. He’s focusing. Oh, my God, Lance. Oh, my God!”

“Not a fluke,” Shiro said, his voice thick.

Lance shifted back to center, staying at a comfortable angle for Keith to look at. He kept one arm curled around Keith’s shoulders. He touched the side of Keith’s face, brushing his bangs from his eyes.

“Hey, Keith.” Lance sniffled. “I missed you, buddy.”

He brushed Keith’s bangs with his fingers again.

And it was a small thing.

Barely noticeable.

But Lance was hyper-focused on every movement, every tiny sound. So when Keith sniffed the next time Lance’s wrist passed near his nose, Lance noticed.

Lance stopped stroking the side of Keith’s head.

On another blind whim, he let his hand hover near Keith’s nose.

“Lance?” Hunk said. “What are you doing?”

“Is everything okay?” Shiro said.

“It’s fine,” Lance said. “I just…I think he’s smelling me.”

“Oh,” said Shiro, sounding confused.

Keith’s eyes stayed on Lance, taking breaths exclusively through his nose.

“Oh,” said Shiro. “I think he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, that's it for now! Hope you enjoyed that bit of happy at the end :) If you're able, please let me know what you thought in the comments.
> 
> Also, I'm not great with social media stuff, so I've never posted my tumblr on here. But it's occurred to me that for those who aren't able to subscribe to this fic but would like notifications for it, it could be helpful if I posted when I update on my blog? If that would be helpful to anyone, pls let me know, and I'll do it.


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